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[FM24] The Builder & The Professor - Stage 4 Manchester United


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9 hours ago, Deisler26 said:

Very excited for this buddy! Will follow!

 

5 hours ago, Vakama2619 said:

Dropped a follow!

 

4 hours ago, Hootieleece said:

Interesting I will follow.

 

1 hour ago, uroszila said:

Very nice idea. I will follow this one.

Thank you all.  I've always like the idea of a youth only save but find it very restrictive - I can't go out and bring in new talent to help the team so no scouting, can lead to some unbalanced lineups since you are wholly dependent on the youth intakes.  I like a good journeyman save but I always find myself leaving too quickly for the next job.  This idea gives a little of both - need to bring in the youth but only the youth that is good enough to play while still being able to fill lineup holes with outside talent plus I can move to a new club only when the objectives are met so I'm forced to build something while I'm the manager.

Very interested to see what sort of career arc this type of save will bring about.

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Why Royal Excelsior Virton?

Out of all the clubs available to me in Europe, why did I choose Royal Excelsior Virton to start this save?

Location

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It is a part of Belgium but based on it's location, it's not really a part of Belgium (in my opinion).  Located in the southwest corner of Belgium, it is a short drive south into France to Metz.  A short drive east into Luxembourg.  And to the southeast, you can get into Germany with the closest major city being Saarbrucken.  This location gives the city an interesting history.  It was a common stopping point for the German army during their invasions into France during World War I and World War 2.  

Population

The town of Virton is barely over 10,000 but that said, it is the capital of the Luxembourg district of Belgium.  For a small town, it is an important to the country and as a result, it could draw players to the club.  If I can not pull players into the club via the youth intake, I have some decent population hubs in Metz and Saarbrucken that I can scout to bring in talent.  But one of the focuses of this save is to build from within so that will be first way to develop talent and sell them off to bigger clubs.  The goal will be a talent center in the Luxembourg district and use this talent center to build and grow the club through player sales and reinvestment into the club.

Belgium as a whole

The country is small but has a lot of clubs.  This gives me a chance to sell players to clubs in higher divisions (completes one of the Stage 1 tasks).  Also could mean that will be a decent chance to jump to a bigger club fairly quickly after I complete Stage 1.  If I can't move within Belgium, I'm close enough to both France and Germany to find a 2nd or 3rd tier job in those countries to move to for Stages 2 or 3.

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R.E. Virton - The Beginning

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Michiel Seegers is a 29-year old from Virton.  After suffering a career-ending ankle injury playing in the lower tiers of the Belgian game, he has been brought in by his hometown club to get them back into the second tier of Belgian football after Virton suffered relegation at the end of the 2022-23 season.  Seegers is a tough hard-nosed center midfielder who was never afraid to get stuck into a tackle.  That's how he suffered his career-ending injury.  He wants to bring that fight to Virton.  Seegars is ready to get his feet wet as a manager and ready to build something at Virton before moving on to his next adventure.  He wants to experience life outside of Virton and Belgian football.

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Both the board and the supporters want to see win promotion back into the second tier Challenger Pro League.  The board want us to be "competitive" in the Croky Cup.

The Squad

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Two young goalkeepers fighting for playing time.  I'll need to see who performs better during the friendlies before making a decision on a starter.

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Two absolute studs in the backline.  Teddy Mezague in the middle and Souleymane Karamoko running the right channel.  The rest of the players are not terrible either.  Deep and good.  I like what I see here.

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The midfield is just average.  Going to need to get a lot out of Liamine Mokdad, this season, if the midfield is going to perform as we hope it can.

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Attack is lead by the aging Ilombe Mboyo.  Need to see some development from Godwin Gagban behind Mboyo if we are to go far this season.

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9 hours ago, 13th Man said:

Interesting idea - forcing you to both journeyman succeed and foster young talent (something I definitely haven't been as focused on in my FM23 journeyman save).

Looking forward to seeing how it goes!

 

9 hours ago, phnompenhandy said:

I love to see an original challenge. Colour me intrigued and added to your flock of followers :thup:

 

2 hours ago, Rikulec said:

As others have said, nice idea for a save. You have another follower. :thup:

Thank you all.  I'm happy you all like the idea.  I put a good amount of thought into it.  Hopefully, it pans out the way that I think that it will.

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2023-24 Midseason Update

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We've settled into using a 4-3-3 formation very similar to what I was using at Crystal Palace.  Outside of a couple of defensive meltdowns, it's doing the job for us.  We are limiting the opposition chances while creating plenty of chances for ourselves.  The two defensive meltdowns were enough to give me some pause.  I was ready to pull the trigger on an ultra-aggressive 4-2-3-1 formation.  But I'm afraid that it could be too aggressive and set us up for more 3-5 and 3-4 losses.  It's all about the balance.  We are a good club for this division but we are not a great club that will just steam roll the opposition regardless of our setup.

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We've got a little separation between ourselves and second place Hoogstraten.  The top three clubs get promoted into the second tier.  We have enough offensive firepower to turn potential draws into wins which is so far the difference in leading the league and battling for the promotion slots.  

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RF Axel VitrisVitris has been our offensive MVP through the first half of the season.  He leads the team with nine goals while adding six assists.  Has been an absolute terror down the right wing all season.  FC Annecy has interest in signing him.  Should Annecy follow through with their interest, it would tick off "Sell player to a higher division" box for Stage 1 of The Builder.

LB Heritier DeyongeOur defensive MVP in the first half.  The rapidly developing Deyonge is one of the best, if not the best, left back in the league.  He is using the playing time that he is receiving to rapidly develop his game.  He should start to attract interest from bigger clubs in the near future.

Finances

Our biggest problem has been off the field.  We are just bleeding money.  Even with our small payroll which was made even smaller in the month of December, we just continue to lose money because we have a crap ton of loans which need to be paid back.  We've already paid back 780k in the loans but still have another 3.1M to pay back over the next six seasons.  This could be the biggest stumbling block to completing Stage 1 with Virton.  We should be able to complete: Win a league or a cup, Sell a player to a higher division club, give an academy player a start, have a player named to the League Team of the Year.  I will have a hard time completing the Obtain National B and A Coaching Licenses because the club is in the red and, in FM, clubs won't agree to coaching getting their coaching badges because they can't afford it.  That's what makes this a challenge!

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12 hours ago, phnompenhandy said:

Great stuff! Even with a promotion under your belt, will you get a job for Stage 2 if you have no badges? Let's see .....

I'm having a massive internal debate on that question.  If I achieve the other four Stage 1 targets, do I leave if a job interview comes my way or do I turn the interviews down until I get the badges.

3 hours ago, SixPointer said:

Nice buffer to second place. What’s the tactical philosophy at this stage?

I took one of my Crystal Palace 4-3-3 formations from FM23 over to use in FM24.  It has an attacking philosophy since we are, on paper, one of the better teams in the league.

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50 minutes ago, 13th Man said:

Great first half season.  Would promotion ease any of the financial issues?  I'm thinking not by enough in Belgium...

Quote

Belgium Finances are still not fixed. already reported this as a bug (like FM22/Fm23). Youth setup costs , non football costs are out of control, at every club.. You could say it is realistic , because a lot of teams in Belgium have red figures but.. it was reported and under investigation last year, it seems the same (tested it with ten teams, after one season most of them lost 1.5/2 milj.

This was posted on Saturday. I think SI acknowledged it's a bug. Finances might affect this save until the full version is out.

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2 hours ago, phnompenhandy said:

This was posted on Saturday. I think SI acknowledged it's a bug. Finances might affect this save until the full version is out.

Yeuch, that's rough. Have they mentioned whether or not any fixes would be save game compatible?

Following along, keeper, as always - although you know I'm more of a lurker round these parts 

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9 hours ago, keeper#1 said:

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Not sure this youth intake could be much worse.  SEVEN unambitious personalities as well as low determination and a casual.  At least the top two are good.

Make sure you setup mentoring groups in your U-19's if possible. I know you could do it in FM22 and FM23. Most of the time I would forget though.

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9 hours ago, phnompenhandy said:

This was posted on Saturday. I think SI acknowledged it's a bug. Finances might affect this save until the full version is out.

Thanks for the bug report.  Yeah, I'm like 2.5 million Euros in the hole.  Might give me a reason to bail out of Belgium after the season.

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Looking a little closer at the finance issue.  The club's biggest expense is loan repayment.  It's almost 3x what we are paying the players.  Feeling more confident about bailing after the season.  From a realism standpoint, a young manager would leave a club, fresh off a league win (more on that later - spoiler), that is in deep financial peril.  Even if meant taking a step back to a lower league.

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Okay.  I didn't get the KV Kortijk job and I'm pretty annoyed right now.  The finances in Belgium have issues.  I can't get the board to approve studying for a coaching license so I lose out on completing Stage 1 and run into problems getting new jobs.  So, I'm going to reset with a new save in this thread.  

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  • keeper#1 changed the title to [FM24] The Builder & The Professor - Stage 1 AS Nancy
6 hours ago, Shrewnaldo said:

That sucks about the bug. Is it just the Belgian lower levels that are affected, or throughout the tiers? 

Looking back at the clubs on 11 July 2024

Belgian Pro League - 16 clubs (9 clubs in the red)

Challenger Pro League - 16 clubs (13 clubs in the red)

National Division 1 - 18 clubs (12 clubs in the red)

Total - 50 clubs (34 clubs in the red - 68% of the clubs)

Similar leagues to Challenger Pro League

Dutch Eerste Divisie - 20 clubs (2 clubs in the red - 10% of the league0

Danish Nordicbet Liga - 12 clubs (3 clubs in the red - 25% of the league)

Swiss Challenge League - 12 clubs (0 clubs i the red - 0% of the league)

England League Two - 24 clubs (5 clubs in the red - 21% of the league)

Total - 68 clubs (8 clubs in the red - 12 of the clubs)

Clearly something is not right in Belgium

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A Dive into the Game World

The Manager

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Eugene Olivier is a 40-year old born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada to a Canadian mother and a French father.  This makes him a dual national.  As a kid, Olivier was never into the traditional Canadian sports: ice hockey, lacrosse, curling (this really disappointed his mother - a former Canadian national champion), and Canadian Football (this disappointed his father who is a member of the Montreal Alouettes Ring of Honour).  The only sport which held his interest was soccer which made him an outcast at school since soccer is not a big part of the culture of Quebec.  While studying at McGill University, he started to research his ancestry.  He discovered that his love of soccer likely came from one source - he found that one of his great uncles is Arsene Wenger.  This was unknown to Eugene since his father never talked to his family back home.  Eugene started to study the sport of soccer/association football closer.  He dove deeper into the sport further distancing himself from his father.  His mother stayed close and talked to him at length about playing the long game.  Using her deep knowledge from curling strategy, she impressed upon Eugene that the best way to win is to always put yourself in the position to win.  Sometimes it means luring your opponent into an area where it looks you are weak but you are actually strong.  She also reminded him that the path of success is not straight line.  There will be ups and downs.

Eugene spent years kicking around the game in Canada.  He was a decently successful professional player for Atletico Ottawa.  When his time as a player came to an end, he obtained all of his Canadian coaching badges so he get into the coaching side of the sport.  He did not obtain any of the CONCACAF coaching badges.  He did not think they would useful in Europe where he set his sights on managing.  He sent an application on a whim to Nancy, in the northeast of France.  Nancy were once a successful club winning the Coupe de France in 1978 and the Coupe de la Ligue in 2006.  They have also won Ligue 2 five times.  But now, they are on hard times down in the third tier.  Olivier thought a highly motivated manager with ties to Arsene Wenger could be the guy to turn the club around.  He was right.  The club thought a descent of Wenger would bring Wenger to matches and hanging around the club.  Maybe if Olivier does not pan out, they could hire Wenger.  So, they are giving Olivier a chance.

The Game World

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Olivier wants to attempt to inject Canadian blood into the European game starting with his Nancy side.  He thinks that it is an untapped market of cheap players.  He thinks that they have a high ceiling and could just as good as their American counterparts in Europe.  

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Olivier is ready to tackle the first day on the job at Nancy.

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Meeting the Team

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In the evening of 11 July 2023, Olivier, after completing all of the contractual paperwork, was able to meet the players who will make up the 2023-24 Nancy club.

Goalkeepers

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Two good goalkeepers on the senior team.  He has a clear cut #1 in Martin Sourzac and backing him up is youngster Marco Giagnono.  A solid 1-2 combo heading into the season.  Defense wins games.

Defense

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Another solid group of players.  A pair of African center backs providing strength in the middle along with Maxence Cartier either backing them up on playing as part of a three center back formation.  Behind all three of them is Lucas Pellgrini.  Shaquil Defos is the only natural right back on the roster so that is a concern.  Left back has plenty of depth with Geatan Bussmann the clear cut starter.  Two youngsters are vying for playing time behind Bussman.  Does Olivier go out and look for a backup right back or does he look internally for that right back option off the bench.

Midfield

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The midfield could be a place of concern.  There's not a lot of good options here and most of the options are on the young sides.  Will Olivier bring in some depth to the midfield or will he roll with the kids?  Another question for him to answer during the friendlies and first part of the season.

Attack

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A good group with a mix of youth and experience.  Rapid development of the youngsters in attack could cause some problems if they displace the veterans in the starting lineup.

Youth Setup

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Lots of good young players in the U21 and U19 teams.  A bunch of hungry kids wanting playing time.

Finances

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A smallish transfer budget and an even smaller wage budget.  Olivier is okay with that because it means that the club does not want to run into financial peril.

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Club is projected to continue to make money year over year.

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A sizable loan but a manageable loan repayment schedule.

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Plenty of companies are willing to put their name behind the club.

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Preseason 6th place ranking is good enough to put us in the promotion and league championship mix.  There are some big names who dropped down from Ligue 2.  Going to be a tough battle all season long for those promotion places.

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Just chipping in fwiw, Belgian league finances have been bugged for years. The top division has a tv money deal similar to that of Holland, had it for years actually, and it's worth about 120M p/a if I remember correctly. But for some reason, I've never seen a Belgian club get more than 1.6M from domestic league tv money, which is wildly inaccurate. It's sad because there's so much potential for good saves there.

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Time For Some Friendies

Olivier was a little confused when he saw the schedule and the club was opening was six "friendlies."  He quickly realized that they are basically scrimmages or pre-season games where the club can milk some extra cash out of their fan base.  The club stayed closed to home and didn't leave France while playing clubs that were even on par with them on just a little bit better.

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He is setting the club out into a 3-4-1-2 formation.  He wants to get the ball into the box and into the box quickly.  He wants the left back to tuck inside and behind the attack-minded midfielder on his side of the pitch.  However, he has noticed a small problem.  The wide center back wants to play in the same space as the inverted wing back.  He may need to switch up the inverted wing back role to something that has the player getting more down the wing and less in the center of the pitch.  Other than that issue, the formation seems to have worked well in the preseason.

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The offense is in good shape scoring in five of the six matches.  The defense allowed either zero or one goal in four of the six matches.  In the two matches where they allowed 2+ goals, they lost both matches.  This shows Olivier that he's going to need make sure that the defense is tight so the club has a chance to take at least from the match.  Always defense first.  Then, the offense will follow once they gain trust with the defense.

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12 hours ago, keeper#1 said:

Time For Some Friendies

Olivier was a little confused when he saw the schedule and the club was opening was six "friendlies."  He quickly realized that they are basically scrimmages or pre-season games where the club can milk some extra cash out of their fan base.  The club stayed closed to home and didn't leave France while playing clubs that were even on par with them on just a little bit better.

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He is setting the club out into a 3-4-1-2 formation.  He wants to get the ball into the box and into the box quickly.  He wants the left back to tuck inside and behind the attack-minded midfielder on his side of the pitch.  However, he has noticed a small problem.  The wide center back wants to play in the same space as the inverted wing back.  He may need to switch up the inverted wing back role to something that has the player getting more down the wing and less in the center of the pitch.  Other than that issue, the formation seems to have worked well in the preseason.

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The offense is in good shape scoring in five of the six matches.  The defense allowed either zero or one goal in four of the six matches.  In the two matches where they allowed 2+ goals, they lost both matches.  This shows Olivier that he's going to need make sure that the defense is tight so the club has a chance to take at least from the match.  Always defense first.  Then, the offense will follow once they gain trust with the defense.

Like the system. Very attacking should make for some very entertaining matches 

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