The FM24 Youth Academy Challenge

WhiteCat33 · December 14, 2023

@Daddy Applaud your Belgian dedication. I still remember how bummed I was when they broke the finances there as I love all the quality players you get in Belgium. I'm sticking out Barbados from a similar mindset.

Also: How did they know!?!

I keep the game up on a secondary laptop during the day to play a bit here and there so the idle time in my save has gotten disgusting.

V50 · December 14, 2023

On 12/12/2023 at 20:11, WhiteCat33 said:

FM23 Barbados YAC: Road View FC

2062 Season 40 – BFA Digicel Premier League

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Youth Academy Challenge FM23 Thread:

Start Post | Season 1 |Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4 | Season 5 | Season 6 |Season 7 | Season 8 | Season 9 | Season 10 |Season 11 |Season 12 | Season 13 |Season 14 | Season 15 | Season 16 |Season 17 | Season 18 |

Youth Academy Challenge FM24 Thread:

Season 19 |Season 20 |Season 21| 2043 Takeover |Season 22 |Carrillo Post |Season 23 |Season 24|Season 25 | Season 26 |Season 27|Season 28 |Season 29 | Season 30 |Season 31 | Lloyd-31a | Lloyd 31b ; 31C | Season 32 | 32b-Footedness |Season 33|NxGN 2055 |Season 34|Season 35 |Season 36|2059 NACL Final | Season 37 |Season 38|Season 39|

Statistics Posts:

CA Calculator 1 | CA Calculator 2 |CA Calculator v5 Download |Mentoring Post |CA Calculator v6 Download |Position CA |

League Performance:

Cup Performance:

BDFSP really showed up in the cup, with what I consider the true cup final match early in the 3rd Round. Our GK came up big in the shootout with 2 stops, but it was a nervy game that saw us claw back both of their goal advantages. I thought we had lost it when they scored in the first minute of ET, but C Clark and A Lloyd combined again in the knick of time in the 118 to take us to penalties.

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North American Champions League:

Another year to forget in the NACL, but that's not surprising. We have a ton of 16 - 19 year old players right now so the consistency just isn't there on both ends of the field. The only senior part of the squad is the midfield right now.

Caribbean Zone:

We lost 3-1 to Humble Lion early on and it basically meant the end of our run. They caught us out defensively with balls over the top and runners through our CD line that just didn't organize well at all against this team.

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NACL Tournament Tree:

Familiar faces this year advancing deep into the tournament. Nice to see St Louis City get to the QF and Costa Rican side Herediano.

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Squad:

CA Player List:

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Excel Graphs:

Lots of rotation combined with how the NACL resets before the end of our season so the stats are never included in my exports means there are no 1500M players. I could change the value, but really I'm more interested in the rotational development right now with so many young players. Not much to say here about the graphs other than we are still not rebuilt yet and are well off the strength of the 2059 NACL Final squad. Optimistically we are 2-3 seasons away from returning to that caliber assuming our strikers develop.

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Player Highlights:

I'll focus on the youngsters right now as we have a large number who have been featuring in the squad this year as we are in the midst of a massive rebuilding effort at the club.

16 & 17 Year Old Players: Player Screenshots

Rhys Jackson - The attacker I am most excited with right now. Even with a neutral personality he is developing well and putting in good performances from the AMR-IF position.

Azarel Howell - CD who started Casual, so mentoring is critical for him to have any chance of being salvaged. I've gotten him up to Low Determination & Level Headed, so he's moving in the right direction mentally, but hasn't improved his ability much.

Tajio Stoute - A major injury meant he never played competitively for us and has only just in the final month of the season begin to play youth games again to regain fitness. Didn't lose too much CA from the injury and still has potential. You can see the Youth Managers are playing him as a WBR and AMR due to lack of depth so he's gaining some positional knowledge.

Renaldo Harewood - Mentoring hasn't improved him yet, but he's done well enough as our 3/4th choice DM right now.

Rondelle Grant - In the rotation for our back 3, he has the best jumping reach of our current developing CDs which I value highly. Sadly his skill & mental attributes really haven't improved as much as I hoped. Even though he's fine, I'm disappointed as I was hoping for a 12/13 attribute player instead of a 10/11 one.

Tajio Williams - Like Grant above he is another disappointment whose personality has downgraded from Ambitious to Fairly Sporting and hasn't really developed his physicals at all for us. I'll probably send him out on loan when he turns 18 to see if that helps as being in our rotation obviously isn't.

Kayne Vickers - With Jackson above, this is the other youngster I'm actually happy with. Even without speed his 12 long shots and good (and developing) mentals has seen him play very well for us as a DM-SV.

18 & 19 Year Old Players: Player Screenshots

Rakim Brathwaite - One of our starting CDs he seems to reach what my coaches think is his potential already at 19 which is disappointing. Like Grant he has less than ideal technical skills defending, but is better mentally while lacking the jumping reach.

Raheim Highland - Our best developing youngster is unfortunately our GK. I've done my best to get him some rotational game time to develop and it seems to have worked. We have a 32 year old backup GK who I've loaned out for 2 years now to give Highland at club development. However, at this level of skill he's good enough to move to some of the better clubs in the Caribbean on loan so I think next year or two I'll flip it.

Nicoli Smith - A rare player I kept down in the Youth team I just promoted him and will see if he works for a more AMR-IW set up

Transfers:

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Best XI:

FM Screenshots:

Excel Tables:

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Head Coach:

Club Improvements:

Relocation to our 30k All seater stadium is complete! Still haven't notched enough rep for the next Youth Facility upgrade, nor any progress convincing the board to give us foreign affiliates. Financially due to the cup giving us 10Million every year finances are a distant memory. @V50 I know you changed how you did finances for this years file but figured its worth noting that around 2060 The Barbados Cup winnings went from the 1.5-1.8 Million it had been for a good decade directly to 10 Million.

Youth Academy:

HOYD:

No Change

Youth Intake Preview:

Good Preview

Youth Intake:

Top 3 Players:

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We’ve got a great 19 year old GK prospect, so unfortunately this guy is unneccesary, but I’ll develop him and he’ll make one of the other domestic teams happy

Quick little winger for the left side, but he lacks skill

Striker could be decent, adds to the large pool of developing strikers we have at the club.

Excel Tables:

Quality is back down to what we have been seeing most seasons, so its possible we just had a 3 intake Golden Generation. Only improvement really is determination here, with drops in Ambition and Professionalisim with the drop in CA this year.

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Barbados National Team:

2061

Brutal year for Barbados with a failure to qualify for the WC by being soundly dominated in the WCQ Group phase. This was combined with a poor showing at the Gold Cup.

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2062

A breather year now after the pain of last year. Back up into Division A of the Nations League the draw was favorable for Barbados with Haiti and Costa Rica. Don't see any chance they win the group, but its plausible that they can beat the drop over Haiti. Note they played Costa Rica in the WCQ and failed to score in either match.

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Road View Internationals:

With a lot of young players right now you can see we have a lot of young internationals and more U20 players than usual.

Barbados Main:

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Barbados Youth:

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Caribbean International Performance:

World Cup Qualifying:

Jamaican & possibly Haiti will be headed to the World Cup.

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Gold Cup:

Both Dominican Republic & Trinidad & Tobago got handedly eliminated in the QF. Honduras might have another Golden Generation as they advanced over USA to the final.

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Statistics Manager:

Personality Changes:

Something I didn't expect has been happening with the infamous (lost us the NACL) R Hoyte's personality, that I've only noticed with the tracking:

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While I've allowed him to be a team VC and team leader I can't say I'll ever forgive him for his infamous error losing us the NACL in the 105' of ET. This has been due to his great Hidden Attributes, Det, Player Traits & positional versatility. What I've found fascinating is the changes in his personality during this save.

Intake: 2049

He generated with good determination, but the fairly average personality of Fairly Determined with Media-Friendly.

According to my tool, this puts his Pro & Amb into pretty large ranges whose averages are not anything spectacular.

18 Years Old: 2051

Due to our gap at WBR, at 16 he immediately went into the first team and quickly became a natural at that position. Since we had Resolute & Perfectionist mentors in CM, he was in a mentoring group and already by 18 he had upgraded his personality to Resolute while remaining Media Friendly.

This sets his new range as having on average a very high professionalism & a slightly higher ambition. Also notice his Determination increased by +1.

This happens because interestingly Resolute has a higher min-threshold for Ambition than Fairly Determined does. Since he is just MF we really don't know much about any of his other attributes except that he has low Pressure.

25 Years Old: 2059

By this mid-point in his career we had finally had a natural WBR come in so R Hoyte moved to the DM-SV role becoming his 3rd Natural position while through mentoring (and rotational cover) he got accomplished enough at AMR to add it to his positions. Through Fines & natural development he increased his Determination by +2, which resulted in R Hoyte going Driven over Resolute.

The tool now lacks information about his Professionalism completely as he remained Media Friendly so the average of his range dropped from 17.5 to 10.5, but he has on average 16 Ambition.

Looking directly at what I have for the different personalities:

I added Perfectionist in here, because that is what I expected him to become as we had (at the time) a lot of team leaders of that personality. If these ranges are correct, the reason he wouldn't are 1) The game considers Driven > Perfectionist ; 2) His Ambition is between 12 & 14 3) His Temperament is Greater than 9.

That 3rd point really surprised me, that Perfectionist could actually be considered a partial downgrade from Driven players with regards to Temperament. This explains why I notice the downgrades in temperament when I'm mentoring players. However, getting double upgrades in Ambition & Professionalism more than makes up for it.

Before spending time looking at these ranges, I always thought Driven had higher Ambition threshold than it actually does.

29 Years Old: Current 2062

A few more seasons as one of our top 5 players, VC and thus a team leader has seen R Hoyte gain in professionalism enough that he has improved himself from Driven to Professional. This means obviously there was no drop in professionalism when he switched over from Resolute.

Again, because he has remained Media Friendly the average of the ranges is pretty uninformative for everything except Professionalism.

Except the fact we now know he has Greater than 10 Temperament! The switch over to Professional tells us why he was never Perfectionist, as it was Condition 3 that was most likely the case.

Attribute Summary

Most likely R Hoyte started with 13/14 Professionalism, 10/11 Ambition and 10+ Temperament. Through mentoring he's gained +4/5 Professionalism, +1 or more Ambition, and +4 Determination.

Summary

This is a frustrating part of the save as we work to develop a new star attacker to build a formation around. This next season we should get back to advancing out of the Caribbean Group stage, but we don't have much of a chance against Liga MX sides currently. We lack a fast striker, which is pretty crucial to beating those teams. When we had Nurse and Carrilo they averaged around 14/15 on the speed attributes. All our current strikers are 13 or less, which just doesn't work to get behind teams. Combined with that, we actually have a weaker back-line aerially so balls over the top with fast forwards are a real weakness in the squad. I am adjusting the formation to a more dropping back-3 so we will see if that helps.

I have no clue on the Cup prize money - that's outside my pay grade. I didn't even know it could improve that much, but if you think about it it makes sense - the Bajan league is one of the most reputable leagues in the region.

WhiteCat33 · December 14, 2023

14 minutes ago, V50 said:

I have no clue on the Cup prize money - that's outside my pay grade. I didn't even know it could improve that much, but if you think about it it makes sense - the Bajan league is one of the most reputable leagues in the region.

I know its linked to reputation, I was just stunned when this happened in 2060:

The shocker to me is how big of disparity there is between the cup winnings and the league winnings as well as how the league winnings didn't change materially when the cup went bezerk. The League reputation has been stable for a good decade now at 3rd in North America.

The change might have been the Cup becoming the #1 Cup competition in North America, which is bizarre to me. Not sure how it does that over Mexico. Also, to note is how high low-performing nations cups like Martinique and the DR have become. Perhaps these cups are overweighted? Not sure how that part works in your DBs.

The current state has the US Open cup down at #13 and dropping, which to me doesn't make much sense. I do have a USA LL modded DB enabled, but I'm not sure if that effects the US Cup at all.

I wish IRL the BFA spread the money out, but unfortunately all the money goes to the victor. Would have been helpful for developing the league earlier. Now the clubs have finally built actual stadiums and are getting over 1M a year in sponsorship revenue, which is finally developing the other domestic club facilities.

I'm proud to say I can fit over 10% of the Barbados population in my Stadium!

Its amazing how far these low sponsorship values get you in Barbados when the running costs for these clubs is so low.

Edited December 14, 2023 by WhiteCat33

libbyshuss · December 14, 2023

France - FC Fleury 91

French National (Tier 3) - 2024/25 (season 1)

Season Summary

Well, I wasn't expecting this. I liked the look of the squad when I took over - nicely balanced, lots of experience throughout the team - but never did I think we'd go and get promoted! Not only that, we were within a whisker of the title! We won the first three, lost the next three, so I didn't really thin it was realistic until we hammered league leaders Orleans 5-0 mid-season. And from that result we went on a fantastic morale/form run to push us all the way to second place! Our goal difference was mad - we were scoring goals from all over the place!

Tactics

The squad was ideal for a 4231, with lots of cover throughout despite the smallish squad. Most players rotated throughout the season but here were the main ones

Player of the Season

Best player was Theo Bloudeau, but he probably also is symptomatic of our main problem. The squad is pretty old, and the youth players/set-up is appalling. So the team is likely to get weaker in the next few seasons. Bloudeau has been around the lower divisions for years but playing as a mezzala he used his experience brilliantly well. Being top scorer from midfield also shows our other main issue - no decent striker!

Youth

So we really needed a good intake, but given our youth levels I was prepared for the worst. And it isn't too bad all told. Only one worth signing but with any luck he'll be a first teamer

He looks ok, nothin special at the minute. But with a bit of coaching who knows?

Finances and Upgrades

I spent the first half od the season worrying how I was gonig to solve our financial problems. We were projected to lose around 750k which meant we weren't going to get any upgrades. But without upgrades, I wouldn't be able to improve the team! luckily, in the short term, promotion solves that. First thing the board did? give me a coaching badge course and this:-

The board also announced...

we've made huge leaps forward in this first season. Trick is to now maintain it!

Career

Can we stay up? it would be a minor miracle i think but at the same time critical as it means we could maintain professional status and make a bit of money

v1n1akabozo · December 15, 2023

@libbyshuss

A question regarding your tactical approach: using both a winger and a complete wing back on the same side doesn't make the defense a bit weaker? The advantage is having two players being able to cross a ball targeting both the opposing inside forward and the main striker. If you had a winger good enough to win the 1v1's would you still use the CWB?

Fmfan00 · December 15, 2023

Here’s my question… I wanted to start in level 20 of England S s created team nothing special everything would be the same as all of the other teams at that level.. my question is when it comes to scouts.. if we can’t sign players what do u use scouts for?

libbyshuss · December 15, 2023

4 hours ago, v1n1akabozo said:

A question regarding your tactical approach: using both a winger and a complete wing back on the same side doesn't make the defense a bit weaker? The advantage is having two players being able to cross a ball targeting both the opposing inside forward and the main striker. If you had a winger good enough to win the 1v1's would you still use the CWB?

weirdly, it doesn't make it that much weaker. I'm a L:uton fan as well and we've been using that tactic in real life so I tried to copy it a bit!

The further I go though the more defensive my full backs tend to get

CJ'43 · December 15, 2023

Kavala Football Club / Αθλητικός Όμιλος Καβάλα

Season 5 - 2028/29

Schedule / Squad / Transfers / Finances / Manager

Season Summary: just like last year, once again, we've struggled to survive in the Greek Super League. An abysmal start and an early elimination in the cup were followed by a streak of 14 games without a win, culminating in a devastating 9-0 defeat to the giants Olympiacos. However, reminiscent of the previous season, we managed to secure another year in the top tier on the last day. We finished with the same number of points as the relegated Kallithea in the relegation phase.(Regular Phase / Relegation Group)

Even with 48 goals conceded in 32 games, our goalkeeper Vasilis Kyrialanis was ou most regular player with 3 MoM awards and 7 clean sheets. Once again, Kosmas Gekas was our top goalscorer, this time with... 7 goals.

Youth intake: another year of promising players, like Grigoris Kabiotis, Panagiotis Christodoulou, Stefanos Karypidis, Dimitris Samouladas, Amir Hoxha, Periklis Gouras and Giorgos Bedrelis.

The board finally announced the new stadium. The Kavala Stadium will be completed in 3 years and will cost us 26,5 million euros, with a monthly payment of 300k€. I don't know were we're going to get that kind of money since we're already 600k down in finances...

Team history:

Manager history:

HanziZoloman · December 15, 2023

"I keep it small and simple." Earl of Grey

Season 54/55

Spoiler

Guess we're aiming for a hundred years. Had a break from this damn Manager and found the time for a finish of season 54/55. We missed promotion within two hard fought play off battles against Barnet. We lost two of the best players with long term injuries, fought bravely but lost. Play offs are not our kind of match, we do prefer to gain promotion by winning the league. Since all of our long time servants in defense are not enjoying big matches, it's also time for a cut.

Here we have another of Grey in the game must be the Earls nephew. I can tell, he won't make it. He inherited the Earls professional focus, fairly.

Spoiler

Edited December 15, 2023 by HanziZoloman

Daddy · December 15, 2023

2030/31 Season Review - Belgian Third Tier - Season 7

Quite the turnaround! At the midway point, we were in 17th place with 14 points and -6 GD. The pace we played in the second half would have had us challenging for the league. Can't recommend enough watching a couple of games in full-on slow and learning the way the tactic works and what you want it to look like. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3114485214 I posted the tactic to Steam if anyone wants to see it. The shape and roles etc are nothing fancy, but I added a fair amount of instructions and it worked.

Another really good player coming in on day one. Already fending off suitors. I just want a full season with him before I sell.

Nothing major this season. Big fire sale the previous season, so I want a few seasons of stability. My oldest player is 22, so there's a fair amount of young players pain. The big player I sold the previous season that I have a 50% clause value has jumped where the range is as high as 10M and has dropped to 4.4M. He's only 18 so I'm still hopefully that brings a big windfall.

2031/32 Season Preview:

Based on the way the season ended I'm expecting to start to push up the table. I'm going to try to hold on to players the best I can too this season.

EDIT: Well, I didn't get to keep him. The chairperson approved a worse offer so I scrambled to a better club, for less but I much better clause.

His value immediately shot up.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Daddy

JAwtunes · December 15, 2023

@darren1983 @XaW gents, is a custom db to the lowest division in Iceland ok for this challenge, or does it have to be vanilla?

XaW · December 15, 2023

10 minutes ago, JAwtunes said:

@darren1983 @XaW gents, is a custom db to the lowest division in Iceland ok for this challenge, or does it have to be vanilla?

As long as it's made as real as possible, it should be fine.

XaW · December 15, 2023

Another big sale to Europe!

Got almost a million, plus 50% of next sale, so I had to sell, really.

I would have loved to keep him, but it is what it is.

OlivierL · December 15, 2023

1 hour ago, JAwtunes said:

@darren1983 @XaW gents, is a custom db to the lowest division in Iceland ok for this challenge, or does it have to be vanilla?

Where did you find this one ?

JAwtunes · December 15, 2023

24 minutes ago, OlivierL said:

Where did you find this one ?

I just activated tiers 3 to 6 in the editor. I used Basic Settings, so didn't change any of the vanilla settings or comps.

Spoiler

I did the following using basic settings. Happy to share if you want to give it a go.

Spoiler

I couldn't resist Afrika. So many interesting things to keep the save enjoyable (like the foreign intake)... if I cant get a youth academy that is.

This is their record for last season!

Edited December 15, 2023 by JAwtunes
afrika

Colossus · December 15, 2023

Sociedad Deportiva Leioa

2034/2035

Season Review

Competitions | League Table | Transfers | Schedule Part 1 | Schedule Part 2

What a season! Despite us losing our best player in Asier Marco for his release clause, we have improved so much that we actually got in the Champions League!

Team Stats

Team at the Start of the Season | Team at the End of the Season

Team Stats

Big improvements around the fringes of the team, and I rotated the squad a lot more to just to bring in some more players into the squad

Team of the Season:

GK – Oier Ruiz

RB – Inaki Eguaras

CB – Lucas Leguizamon

A couple of new faces in our starting 11 here. Aitor Marco was a product of last years Intake, Vallejo has been steadily winning his starting spot over Villanueva and Jon Sanchez had to step up with our starting DM leaving. Next year, I want to bring in Goikoetxea, Celihueta and a new player to the starting 11.

Youth Intake

Aimar Galan is, without a doubt, the best product of our academy so far. He is a day 1 everyday starter and I am already retraining him as a CDM. The rest of the lads are going to be spending time in our U19s

Rest of the Players:

GK – Ander Bravo

CB – Manuel Palanca

LB – Iker Alvarez

RM / RWB / RW – Inigo Lambarri

LM – Egoitz Ruiz

RM / LM – Galder Ramos

ST / LW / CAM – Mikel Gutierrez

Other Stuff

Yearly Progression

Manager Attribute Progression

Youth Player Stats

Gora Leioa!

Edited December 15, 2023 by Colossus

dkouv · December 15, 2023

Brora Rangers – Season 8 (2031/32)

Championship Wildly inconsistent but overall much better than last season, we won enough games to steer clear of trouble and even qualified for the playoffs, losing to Livingston in the 1st round.

Players I was greatly helped by the emergence of our first half-decent defender Josh Wallace 05h (DC), and then there’s the usual pletora of star strikers who get us winning the games but are moaning to leave all the time, with the latest addition Tom Thomas 07a (AML/ST) who was instrumental in our late-season unexpected push for playoffs.

Youth intake (preview) Very good as usual. The top prospect is a striker as usual. But this time we got a couple of defenders, hope they can develop!

Facilities/Finances Still losing tons of money, board have cut the wage budget to a measly £5k p/w but we’re still ok overall.

No transfers in, and no major outs either.


Season    |  League       | Pos. |     Europe     |   Best player                    |  Notes
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2024/25   | League 2      |  1   |     n/a        |  Andrew Macrae (ST)              | Promoted
2025/26   | League 1      |  7   |     n/a        |  Andrew Macrae (ST)              |
2026/27   | League 1      |  6   |     n/a        |  Andrew Macrae (ST)              |
2027/28   | League 1      |  5   |     n/a        |  James Wallace (ST)              |
2028/29   | League 1      |  1   |     n/a        |  Andrew Macrae (ST)              | Promoted
2029/30   | Championship  |  6   |     n/a        |  Tony Jukes 05a (ST)             |
2030/31   | Championship  |  8   |     n/a        |  Tony Jukes 05a (ST)             | Won SPL Trust Trophy
2031/32   | Championship  |  4   |     n/a        |  Tom Thomas 07a (ST)             | Lost in playoff 1st round


Facilities
----------
Season    |  Coaching     |  Recruitment      | Training Fac.  | Youth Fac.      |  Stadium
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2024      |  Basic        |  Limited   	      | Basic          |  Poor           |  3000
2024/25   |  Adequate     |  Fairly basic     | Basic          |  Basic          |  3000
2025/26   |  Good         |  Average          | Basic          |  Basic          |  3000
2026/27   |  Excellent    |  Above average    | Basic          |  Basic          |  3000
2027/28   |  Excellent    |  Good             | Basic          |  Basic          |  3000
2028/29   |  Exceptional  |  Good             | Below average  |  Basic          |  3000
2029/30   |  Excellent    |  Good             | Below average  |  Basic          |  3000
2030/31   |  Excellent    |  Good             | Below average  |  Basic          |  3000
2031/32   |  Excellent    |  Good             | Below average  |  Basic          |  3000

Brentmeister · December 15, 2023

1 hour ago, Colossus said:

Sociedad Deportiva Leioa

2034/2035

Season Review

Competitions | League Table | Transfers | Schedule Part 1 | Schedule Part 2

What a season! Despite us losing our best player in Asier Marco for his release clause, we have improved so much that we actually got in the Champions League!

Team Stats

Team at the Start of the Season | Team at the End of the Season

Team Stats

Big improvements around the fringes of the team, and I rotated the squad a lot more to just to bring in some more players into the squad

Team of the Season:

GK – Oier Ruiz

RB – Inaki Eguaras

CB – Lucas Leguizamon

CB – Aritz Melendez

LB – Diego Lacruz

CDM – Jon Sanchez

CM – Koldo Garai

CM – Gorka Pascual

RW – Jesus Vallejo

LW – Aitor Marco

ST – Ander Martin

S1 – Gaizka Alonso

S2 – Jean-Luc Gerard

S3 – Iker Celihueta

S4 – Iker Villanueva

S5 – Alex Goikoetxea

S6 – Ibai Prieto

S7 – Ander Larrea

A couple of new faces in our starting 11 here. Aitor Marco was a product of last years Intake, Vallejo has been steadily winning his starting spot over Villanueva and Jon Sanchez had to step up with our starting DM leaving. Next year, I want to bring in Goikoetxea, Celihueta and a new player to the starting 11.

Youth Intake

Aimar Galan is, without a doubt, the best product of our academy so far. He is a day 1 everyday starter and I am already retraining him as a CDM. The rest of the lads are going to be spending time in our U19s

Rest of the Players:

GK – Ander Bravo

CB – Manuel Palanca

LB – Iker Alvarez

RM / RWB / RW – Inigo Lambarri

LM – Egoitz Ruiz

RM / LM – Galder Ramos

ST / LW / CAM – Mikel Gutierrez

Other Stuff

Yearly Progression

Manager Attribute Progression

Youth Player Stats

Gora Leioa!

3 of the best 8 wonderkids in the world? Nice!

OlivierL · December 15, 2023

3 hours ago, JAwtunes said:

I just activated tiers 3 to 6 in the editor. I used Basic Settings, so didn't change any of the vanilla settings or comps.

Reveal hidden contents

I did the following using basic settings. Happy to share if you want to give it a go.

Hide contents

I couldn't resist Afrika. So many interesting things to keep the save enjoyable (like the foreign intake)... if I cant get a youth academy that is.

This is their record for last season!

Yes had 5 good seasons with them last fm. You get a mix of nationalities, Poland will top the list.

Brentmeister · December 16, 2023

Season 9 Summary

A frankly wild season where giant strides were taken on and off the pitch.

____________________________

Domestic form

An excellent season saw us qualify for the championship group for the first time. This meant that we got to play 10 games against the 5 best teams in the league and the chance to play in Europe the following year.

We managed to secure 4th position and guarantee our second consecutive season of European football and the much needed injection of funds that comes with it.

I feel like we've firmly established ourselves amongst the best of the rest in the league. Club Brugge, Anderlecht, and KRC Genk are by the far best teams and then there's little to choose between the next 3/4.

We lost in the round of 32 in the cup to lower-league opposition after some heavy squad rotation.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Europe

Our first foray into continental football was an eventful one as we made it to the semi-finals, even knocking out favourites Crystal Palace along the way.

After a quite ridiculous 18 games, we narrowly lost to eventual winners AZ 1-0 on aggregate.

We were very unlucky with injuries towards the end of the season. At one stage, right around the time of the semi-finals, we were missing up to 8 players including both of our goalkeepers.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Youth

For the first time in the save, we had players in the NXGN list. 2 of our boys made the top 50.

Intake

6 elite talents were signed but this was the least excited I've been about an intake since we started. We'll see how they pan out.

Young midfielder Antonio Valdes was considered best in class.

Here he is 6 months later.

I decided to change it up and hire a new HOYD.

He's a model citizen who also has extensive knowledge in Czechia and Slovakia, hopefully we'll get a few kids through from here.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Finances

This is where we took massive strides this season.

We made almost 12m in prize money, mainly due to our run to the Europa Conference League semi-finals.

We made 4.2m from a sell-on clause we had in place.

We sold a squad player for 3.5m with a 40% sell-on clause added.

All of this meant upgrades galore! Our training facilities were upgraded twice, youth facilities once, and youth recruitment once. Leaving our infrastructure looking like this:

I'm hoping all this, coupled with our new HOYD results in some juicy intakes.

I also earned my Continental C coaching qualification.

Our projected finances are looking good. Have we finally overcome the bug? Spoliers.....no we haven't!

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Edited December 16, 2023 by Brentmeister

Daddy · December 16, 2023

@Brentmeister It somehow didn't register to me that you were also doing Belgium. I knew it was possible to get there, just an absolute grind.

OlivierL · December 16, 2023

8 hours ago, Brentmeister said:

Season 9 Summary

A frankly wild season where giant strides were taken on and off the pitch.

____________________________

Domestic form

An excellent season saw us qualify for the championship group for the first time. This meant that we got to play 10 games against the 5 best teams in the league and the chance to play in Europe the following year.

We managed to secure 4th position and guarantee our second consecutive season of European football and the much needed injection of funds that comes with it.

I feel like we've firmly established ourselves amongst the best of the rest in the league. Club Brugge, Anderlecht, and KRC Genk are by the far best teams and then there's little to choose between the next 3/4.

We lost in the round of 32 in the cup to lower-league opposition after some heavy squad rotation.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Europe

Our first foray into continental football was an eventful one as we made it to the semi-finals, even knocking out favourites Crystal Palace along the way.

After a quite ridiculous 18 games, we narrowly lost to eventual winners AZ 1-0 on aggregate.

We were very unlucky with injuries towards the end of the season. At one stage, right around the time of the semi-finals, we were missing up to 8 players including both of our goalkeepers.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Youth

For the first time in the save, we had players in the NXGN list. 2 of our boys made the top 50.

Intake

6 elite talents were signed but this was the least excited I've been about an intake since we started. We'll see how they pan out.

Young midfielder Antonio Valdes was considered best in class.

Here he is 6 months later.

I decided to change it up and hire a new HOYD.

He's a model citizen who also has extensive knowledge in Czechia and Slovakia, hopefully we'll get a few kids through from here.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Finances

This is where we took massive strides this season.

We made almost 12m in prize money, mainly due to our run to the Europa Conference League semi-finals.

We made 4.2m from a sell-on clause we had in place.

We sold a squad player for 3.5m with a 40% sell-on clause added.

All of this meant upgrades galore! Our training facilities were upgraded twice, youth facilities once, and youth recruitment once. Leaving our infrastructure looking like this:

I'm hoping all this, coupled with our new HOYD results in some juicy intakes.

I also earned my Continental C coaching qualification.

Our projected finances are looking good. Have we finally overcome the bug?

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

You are really doing a great job and giving my the itch to stop complaining that Belgium is not possible to play.. just like @Daddy never complained Good luck both and maybe i will join (again).

Brentmeister · December 16, 2023

@Daddy @OlivierL I also got very lucky that a wonderkid spawned while I was holidaying during the first season. That worked out to a £15m headstart.

I'm running into new problems now though, my board insists on giving me negative transfer budgets, despite our 20m in the bank, European football, and a soldout 21k every week. The board takes control of player sales during transfer windows and there's nothing I can do about it.

I've brought it up in the Belgium finances thread.

Gundo · December 16, 2023

The survival battle goes on into the second half of the season.

Colossus · December 16, 2023

15 horas atrás, Brentmeister disse:

3 of the best 8 wonderkids in the world? Nice!

NxGn is heavily biased towards prospects that actually play games, that is why you can have random colombians ou peruvians to pad out the list. But yeah, this is the 3rd year where we have had players in at least the top 5, with Ander Martin already winning it

tobiahabramson · December 16, 2023

Macclesfield Town FC

Vanarama National League North

Mid-Season Update 9 2032-33

I don't usually post mid-season updates, but I just can't not gush over how great our form is after so many frustrating years in the VNL North.

After the Boxing Day fixtures, Macclesfield Town have yet to lose a league match, going 25-2-0. Our only loss so far has come in the FA Cup First Round, a disappointing loss to fellow VNL North side Telford. At this point, we are over 20 points clear of 2nd place and are already nearing our club record for wins in a season.

After years and years of extremely shaky defense, a few of our youngsters have really stepped up and grown as players, leading us to be the defensive team in the league this season, conceding only 21 goals in 27 matches. We also have the best offense, scoring 70 in 27 matches, in the league with two strikers who our assistant coach rates as being League One level. If I don't go up this year I am going to throw my computer in the microwave and quit FM forever.

Edit: Of course I'm an idiot and as soon as I posted this I lost my first game 3-0... microwave here I come?

Edited December 16, 2023 by tobiahabramson

libbyshuss · December 16, 2023

France - FC Fleury 91

Ligue 2 - 2025/26 (Season 2)

Season Summary

After our unexpected and unlikely promotion last season it was always going to be a challenge. We were favourites to go down by a long, long way but our first game gave me hope with a 4-3 home win. But then we only won once in the next 21 games! In truth we were hopelessly out of our depth and were relegated with two games to spare.

As soon as relegation was confirmed I got this message....

They weren't happy but gave me a chance. 7 points from the next 5 games to save my job. Which would be fine, except we'd still got two to play in Ligue 2! we drew and lost those so it means I need 2 wins from the opening 3 games of next season to save my job....

Finances and Upgrades

It might have been a complete abject failure on the pitch but it was a huge win off the pitch. Going pro and the TV revenues meant we made a nice profit and were able to invest in some infrastructure, so we go down in a much stronger place than when we went up.

they even raised it at one point!

Not had that before!

Youth

So our squad is limited, aging and small. I really could do with a decent intake this season!

That looks a lot more like it!

Well, it's better than nothing. Being how desperate I am those top 4 will more than likely be first teamers sooner rather than later.

Top prospect Riviere doesn't look great, but I have hopes with that work rate and determination.

Career

So I'm on the precipice! 2 wins needed from the first 3 games of the season to save my job!

WhiteCat33 · December 16, 2023

FM23 Barbados YAC: Road View FC

2063 Season 41 – BFA Digicel Premier League

Spoiler

Youth Academy Challenge FM23 Thread:

Youth Academy Challenge FM24 Thread:

Statistics Posts:

League Performance: CHAMPION

This was by far the worst we've done in the league since very early in the save due to the combination of: congestion, injuries, awful scheduling & an improving domestic league. This culminated in us actually having to secure at least a draw on the final match day to win the league, which we did to set the unappreciated record of fewest points by champion: 52.

Spoiler

The big injury that hurt us in the League (and more in the NACL) was when Clark went out injured for 6 weeks. Considering we constantly play 2 games a week for the regular season that was him being out for 12 games, 2 of which were the Semi Final & Final for the NACL and the rest league and cup matches.

This injury coincided with the peak of the congestion when we had our 8 game April & 9 game May where we didn't have a single week without double-fixtures.

At the heart of this is of course the NACL Final. Then, due to having to move league games for NACL fixtures we had the 3 hardest games of the season immediately following our loss where we actually went winless in 4 games, which is a first as far as I can remember in this save:

Here we really felt the fact that none of our backup strikers could hit the target in the league games. Hopefully I can get some performance out of the new young players and ship off a lot of this mid 20's mediocrity.

Cup Performance: CHAMPION

Quarter Final happened right at the peak of the craziness I detailed above and of course we couldn't win the game in regular time so added a 120 Min fixture ontop of everything.

Spoiler

North American Champions League: RUNNER UP

Caribbean Zone:

We did well enough here to move on. The Tycoon takeover at New-Club in Martinique is still going strong and they have become the regular entrant for the territory.

Caribbean Playoff:

Mount Plesant was a difficult foe, but we overcame them!

NACL Knockout Match Reports

Due to screenshot limits here are all the match reports for the Knockout matches

NACL 2nd Round

1st Leg Away @ Chivas

Spoiler

Excited to be back finally into the NACL proper. We start away in Mexico and I’ve got an actually healthy and fit Best XI who are playing pretty well in preseason and mostly happy, which is a rare treat. I tone down our usual Positive to Cautios and change my WB-A to WB-S for a slightly more conservative setup.

Things are off to a great early start when a attacking throw-in play ends up finding my tall AML on the far post and he puts the header in! It gets even better when we win the ball in our own third and mount a lethal counter attack with our striker Clark putting the ball in the back of the net. Of course the clean sheet couldn’t last and they break through in the 14^th minute. So in the first 15 minutes the score is 2-1. Exciting game!

Things quiet down the rest of the first half and it stays 2-1 at the break. We hold for a long time, but unfortunately in the 82’ they find the equalizer. Or do they!?! This time VAR is on our side as their attackers jumped the free-kick and were offsides!! We waste out the final moments and come away with literally OUR FIRST EVER VICTORY IN MEXICO!

Chivas are in a very poor run of form for the 2^nd half of the season that notably is them not scoring very many goals. Can we keep a clean sheet in Barbados at the end of this extremely congested February?!

2nd Leg in Barbados

Spoiler

I’ve rested the whole team and will be going with almost the same lineup. Only change is to my AMR, I am playing an older faster IW instead of the IF 17 year old I started the first leg. Rhys Jackson is our best young prospect, but he lacks the speed and dribbling skill to beat any of their defenders. He can be a striker sub if required.

At the 15’ mark they hit a huge long ball over the top and yet again their striker is all alone behind our line and scores. VAR comes in and says…OFFSIDE! Phew, but it has me worried. I already have the CDs dropping off to try and not get caught out, but watching the replay they really aren’t marking up well at all on the striker.

However, I don’t have to worry about it as from the offsides free kick we create a team goal with the final kick coming from the AMR I switched in for this lineup Stoute, who has been a rotational choice for us for many years. Big goal for us! Could see in the highlight it was his speed that got him in behind, so was a good switch.

Very quickly after in the 20’ we see a broken corner play find the second cross in by A Lloyd to Clark our striker who places it bottom corner and like that we have a 3 goal coushin! We dig them deeper with another cross to Clark this time by the AML Croney to get him a brace on the night, and 3 in both legs.

In the 2^nd half I switch a CD due to yellow card accumulation worries. 75’ their substituted in striker finds them a goal. But I don’t have to worry as in the 81’ their GK makes a horrendous error passing the ball right to our high pressing forward Clark to get him the hat-trick! But hot-damn Clark isn’t done as we catch them on the break and Stoute hits a low cross right into the path of Clark who puts away his 4^th of the game!! He is exhausted though, and I want him healthy so I sub him after that as we don’t need any more goals.

NACL Quarter Final

Leg 1 – Away at Mazatan

Spoiler

I am playing exactly how I did for the 2^nd leg against Chivas even though my AML has a light knock he should be okay.

We are doing fine in the first part of the half, but in the 37’ our CD Couldbridge totally messes up his low interception and then lets the STC run by him who gets a goahead goal because of it. I’m furious. There are a few highlights in the rest of the first half but it ends 1-0. A stern halftime talk doesn’t see much materialize for us in the start of the second half. I do a triple change (all our subs) on offensive players to see if we can create something. 88’ our AML gets a perfect chance alone on goal and can’t hit the target. Other than that we weren’t threatening in this game and though their goal was shoddy defending, we didn’t deserve the points tonight.

Leg 2 - Home in Barbados

Spoiler

Here we will go with our normal offensive setup (Positive Mentality & WB-A) to see if we can get ourselves the equalizer on our home turf.

First 10 minutes sees us have a lot of attacking highlights that force them to concede 5 corners to start the game, but we can’t get a serious chance out of any of them. Then in the 12’ R Hoyte takes a free kick from basically midfield lofting it wide to the far post, and though we lose the first header he picks up the second ball and shoots a 40 yard shot that crazily hits the crossbar, luckily Stoute is crashing the goal and slots the ball home for an early equalizer! He is having a real resurgence in the squad after spending a year away on loan in Trinidad. VAR checks and confirms the goal.

Just minutes later in the 17’ we win the ball in our own half and execute a great wide counter through captain WBL A Lloyd. His cross finds Clark who is in traffic just outside the box and he takes the shot that deflects off a trailing CD and bounces over the keeper. Lucky, but I’ll take it!

GK Atkins makes some good stops from two of their FKs to keep our lead. They are playing a very high line which is catching our wingers offsides a lot, but we are keeping the pressure completely on them for the rest of the half. 44’ we almost got a goal off a corner but their GK just gets a finger on it to tip it wide. Just before halftime their striker gets injured, so we will have a fresh forward to deal with.

2^nd half starts unremarkable, and then begins opening up after the 60 min subs. 70’ they had a great chance that Atkins came all the way to the top of the box to take care of. I’m still in our offensive set up because I don’t want them to put the pressure on our defense. 75’ Atkins makes a huge stop from point blank denying them the necessary goal.

Final part I switch to balanced, but still keep attacking wingbacks and substitute one of them as I want them to still feel the pressure especially on the counter. 89’ Stoute gets a perfect opportunity at the far post from a cross but hits the post and they start a counter, but thankfully we have enough back to deal with it.

A few more highlights, all ours in their third, sees us get a counter in the 92’ where we switch it from left to right flank for then Stoute to slot a ball in to our striker Clark who finishes it perfectly to seal the win. In case it wasn’t sure in the 93’ their player gets a 2^nd yellow to go down to 10 men and we waste out the final stoppage time. WE ADVANCE!

NACL Semi-Final

1st Leg Home in Barbados

Spoiler

We start off with a big boot forward by our GK in the 7’ to theirs who comes out and fails to control it outside his box. Clark the ever-pressing forward pounces and wins the ball off him and scores on the empty net. That’s what we want to see!!

I forgot to take it off key highlights till the 23’, when R Hoyte has a Free Kick centered in the D outside the box. And he shows his lethality from dead balls by curling it over the wall into the top LEFT corner to give us a 2-0 lead!

Hoyte is taking lots of great long shots forcing saves and hitting crossbars in what is looking to be a dominant attacking performance. In the 46’ Lloyd crosses the ball low to Clark who is taken out when trying to get the shot off awarding us a penalty. Hoyte steps up as our dedicated taker and calmly finishes it getting his 2^nd dead-ball goal in the match. 3-0 lead at halftime

We come out flat and just 30 seconds in it looks like they have pulled a goal back. Goes to VAR and... OFSIDE! We get saved here, even though it was a clear offside on the replay. But then things get worse as just 3 mintues later their CD clobbers my striker and injures him forcing him off.

We hold out well, but 76’ they find their first goal to stand against us when an attacking midfielder isn’t picked up and easily chips the goalkeeper. It is pretty backand forth and open right now as they push for the final goal, but its us with our wide AMs combining to get us a 4^th goal in the 94’ to secure a monumental 4-1 victory.

Unfortunately it’s a bad injury for Clark who will lose his unbelievable form and have us very weak up front. Obviously, he’s out for the return leg but he might also miss the final if we hold the lead and advance. Brutal bad luck here. [Screenshot is above in the League summary]

Semi-Final Return Leg

Spoiler

They are pressing high up the field early knowing we are short our striker right now so are significantly less threatening going forward. I saw it coming, but couldn’t stop it they got a team goal with 15 plus passes as they cut through our entire team in the 19’. Down to a 2 goal lead and a lot of game to go…

We hold them off for a while, and actually have a great chance in the 31’ when our more ballwinning DM takes a long shot that is tipped off the crossbar by the GK. 41’ I had to hold my breath as a long shot by them is tipped off the side post by my GK and we were able to clear it wide and out before they could pounce on it. Thus, we make it to halftime down 1-0.

Second half, we came out well with a couple chances but it was them in the 51’ where they countered on us and increased the lead to 2-0… 59’ and I’ve switched to another backup striker hoping he can do something, but I’m seeing just a mess in buildup.

I end up pulling off an attacker and switching to 1 CM-A in front of my 2 DM-SV to give us more midfield control as they have switched to a 3-5-2 from their 4-2-3-1. They are still getting lots of runs deep but we are doing well to hold them off and in the 85’ we almost get a goal with a bad touch by our CM-A being cleaned up by their GK.

WE DID IT, WE OUTLASTED THEM!!! ONTO THE FINAL!

NACL Final

We have to go away to Mexico to face Toluca

Spoiler

Clark is just barely able to be selected for the game but still is advised not to be used. Honestly though, all our strikers have been so poor its worth the risk of him not being able to complete the game. I start him on the bench as hopefuly he can help in the 2^nd half.

Going with a narrow formation and dual strikers as our star striker is still out injured. I have him on the bench just in case. They are playing a 4-3-3 1 DM so my formation should match up pretty well against their players with the exception of the FBs. I need to be careful of wide overloads.

Pretty hectic start that sees lots of offsides that kill off chances. 13’ I almost had a heart attack as Atkins bobbled a long save and almost hit it into his own net and on the second chance managed to tip it wide. However in the 16’ their midfielder hit a laser from way out to give them the lead.

We hold them for the first half but fail to have any chances. Then in the 2^nd half in the 78’ they make a sub and of course the jerk who comes on dribbles my whole team and scores within a minute of being on the field. Every attack we have they catch us offsides so we don’t register like any xG. This is where having bad strikers is killing us as all of these could have been chances if we had a good strikeforce.

NACL Tournament Tree:

With the exception of being in the bottom half of the tree (thus slotted as the away side in the final) we had a very good draw this year with 2 lower-end Liga Mx sides and then a Costa Rican team. Toluca are not one of the historically best Mexican sides, but they are on an ascendency right now.

Spoiler

NACL Trophy Winners

In the 41 NACL competitions in this save only the first one was won by a non Liga Mx side. While there have been some MLS and Costa Rican teams in finals the NACL has been exclusively Mexico's this save. Very clearly Monterrey and America are the dominant clubs, with Santos Laguna being IMO the 3rd hardest to face (there are many seasons they knocked us out). I included a column of Wins in recent 10 years because it shows how there are new rising teams from Mexico that historically were not successful in the NACL with 6 of the past 10 trophies going to teams other than Monterrey and America.

Squad:

CA Player List:

Spoiler

Excel Graphs:

Spoiler

CA Player Averages:

You can see how big of an issue striker injuries were for us due to the fact that no striker managed to get 1500 minutes in the league. Again, this data is missing NACL matches due to how the season works. if you look at 500M strikers you can see how poor the quality was compared to our defensive players.

Spoiler

Player Highlights:

There are four 17-19 year-olds that I have my hopes resting on becoming our next generation of stars. Rhy Jackson is the most critical as he should become our next star striker to become Clark's replacement soon as he's up to 30 now. The others give us a CD, DM & AMR all of which have a starter who is 27+ currently.

Transfers:

Nothing notable, just tons of loans.

Best XI:

FM Screenshots:

Excel Tables:

Spoiler

Head Coach:

No milestones

Club Improvements:

Board has no ambition and won't agree to anything. Can't wait till someone buys them out, hope its not harder because the club got floated on the stock exchange.

Youth Academy:

HOYD:

No Change

Youth Intake Preview: Another good Preview!

Youth Intake: Looks Promising! We even got a wild foreign combination I would never have guessed: Dutch Indonesian

Top 3 Players:

Personalities are on the poor side sadly, but hopefully can be fixed with mentoring as we got a good amount of potential & current ability in this group.

Spoiler

Sorting by CA Stars: We got a lone 2* CA

Abiola Grant is a very intelligent CAM who has okay movement (12 Pace & Agility) and is either footed. Probably will train him as the AML-IW even though he’s better on the Right currently due to our severe lack of depth at AML. Realistically he could play next year at AML for us in rotation and will provide good cover for the AMR slot.

There are 7, 1.5* CA so I’ll break these by Potential:

4.5* PA

Williams – Fast winger who for some reason can take free kicks without technique? I’m skeptical. Personality is actually okay here.

Zidkigah Taylor (awesome firstname) is an aggressive midfielder with one of the better personalities of this intake continuing our Ambitious tendancies. DM-SV who will get a focus train on his Defensive positioning to learn how to mark at least.

4* PA:

Gittens – A left footed CB with acceptable initial values. We are starting to have very good depth at CD which is wonderful so he will get a full 2-3 years in the youth team to see how he develops with yet another ambitious personality

3.5 PA

Dutch FB:

Either footed GK

Excel Tables:

Spoiler

Barbados National Team:

Gold Cup saw Barbados face off against all Central American teams + Aruba. Seems they were just not quite good enough getting edged out 2-1 by both Honduras and El Salvador to get knocked out. Wouldn't say it was a bad performance but not particularly impressive either. Second half of the year sees Nations League B matches where Barbados should be able to win their group and become a true yo-yo team between the A & B Nations Leagues.

Spoiler

Road View Internationals:

Barbados Main:

Spoiler

Barbados Youth:

Spoiler

Caribbean International Performance:

Gold Cup

Jamaica & Haiti made it out of their groups and were both knocked out by Runners-Up Honduras. Barbados losing 2-1 doesn't look so bad now when compared to the other Caribbean nations.

Spoiler

Barbados Clubs CA:

With how close our season was this year I felt it was worth exporting the first-team squads of the other competitive clubs in Barbados. My spreadsheet has the ability to add up to 20 "Opposition" teams, so I added the 4 best Barbadian teams in: BDFSP, Weymouth Wales, Compton & Notre Dame.

Spoiler

What you'll see is these teams are mostly made up of players in the 80-90 range of CA with just a couple star players over 100 CA-WF. These stars are finally giving us some domestic competition especially defensively as the AI managers tend to prioritize offensive talents over defensive ones.

Summary

After another season as nearly-men I figured it was time to post the updated trophy table. As I mentioned in the post after our loss I am fairly optimistic for the next few seasons. We finally have a good generation of younsters who are being developed properly at the club. The step that will happen this summer is to ship off a huge amount of 23-25 year old 2* Squad players who can all be replaced by 16 year olds with significant potential. Hopefully we can get a few gems out of these very rough stones to begin to mount regular challenges in the NACL!

Edited December 16, 2023 by WhiteCat33

Winski · December 16, 2023

So close, @WhiteCat33!!

Daddy · December 16, 2023

8 hours ago, Brentmeister said:

@Daddy @OlivierL I also got very lucky that a wonderkid spawned while I was holidaying during the first season. That worked out to a £15m headstart.

I'm running into new problems now though, my board insists on giving me negative transfer budgets, despite our 20m in the bank, European football, and a soldout 21k every week. The board takes control of player sales during transfer windows and there's nothing I can do about it.

I've brought it up in the Belgium finances thread.

I get the negative balance, but I get messages that they relinquish control to me. Also, that's a huge break on the player sale!

@OlivierL I knew it would be uphill but I had theorized that a selling club model was how you overcome it and it looks like @Brentmeister is proving that out

XaW · December 16, 2023

XaW - Ubuntu Cape Town FC - Season 2028/29 (Season 5) - DSTV Premiership

Squad | Transfers | Finances

A bit of a let off after the league win last season, but we did struggle a lot with fitness due to fixture congestion this season. And to be fair, while the first team is excellent, not all the backups are good enough. So when we have too many players missing, the level of quality can drop a lot. After the newyear hit, the fixtures slowed down a bit, and we got more players fit again, and we had a very good 2nd half of the season to climb back up the table, and into a decent enough 3rd place. Seeing as we finished only 4 points behind Mamelodi Sundowns, I can't really be too disppointed, but the surprise of the season was Sekhukhune Utd who won it. Last season they finished 9th, so no one saw that coming. We also won the cup this season, so we are going into the Confederations Cup next season. That is the 2nd tier continental cup, for those who didn't know, sort of like the Europa League in Europe.

My top 3 pick of players this season are:

1. Samuel Khumalo 25g - Was injured for a while in the first half of the season, and that was when we had issues, when he came back he showed why is one of the first players I pick.
2. Teboho Dlamini 25b - Another very strong season on the left wing for us. Double figures in both goals and assists is something that really shows his contribution.
3. David Xulu 26f - Scores goals for fun, and the main choice up top for us.

Nedbank Cup: We beat Richards Bay, Mamelodi Sundowns, Stellenbosch, and Kaizer Chiefs to reach the final. There we crushed Golden Arrows to claim the trophy as our own.

Telkom Knockout - We lost to Mamelodi Sundowns on pens in the 1st round.
MTN 8 - We beat Orlando Pirates before we lost to Kaizer Chiefs on pens in the semi final.

Champions League: We beat Sundy of São Tomé & Príncipe and FC San Pédro of Ivory Coast to reach the group stage. There we drew Medeame of Ghana, Mamelodi Sundowns (because facing a South African team is fun...), and ES Sahel of Tunisia. We beat Medeame both times, drew both to Mamelodi Sundowns, and lost once and drew the other to ES Sahel. That left us 3rd in the group and it meant we got knocked out. A good effort, but we faced two of the better teams in all of Africa, so with a kinder draw we could have gotten through.

I got some improvements accepted this season.

Around the world

U21s:

They finished 6th in the Diski Challenge this season and qualified for.... something? I have no idea what yet, probably something next season?

U19s:

They finished 3rd in the South African Under 19s Group 2.

Youth intake:

Trophy cabinet

DSTV Premiership - 1 (2027/28)
GladAfrica Championship - 1 (2025/26)

Nedbank Cup - 1 (2028/29)
Telkom Knockout - 1 (2027/28)

Player statistics:

Most apps for the clubs

Name				Nation		2nd Nation	Time at club	Apps
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Siphamandla Pillay 25e		South Africa	<N/A>		2025-Present	133
Teboho Dlamini 25b		South Africa	<N/A>		2025-Present	114
Valentino Serfontein 26b	South Africa	<N/A>		2026-Present	103
Joshua Nkosi 25n		South Africa	<N/A>		2025-Present	99
Michael Sibeko 26c		South Africa	Scotland	2026-Present	94

Most goals for the club

Name				Nation		2nd Nation	Time at club	Goals
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Xulu 26f			South Africa	<N/A>		2026-Present	53
Teboho Dlamini 25b		South Africa	<N/A>		2025-Present	33
Samuel Khumalo 25g		South Africa	<N/A>		2025-Present	23
Siphamandla Pillay 25e		South Africa	<N/A>		2025-Present	14
Valentino Serfontein 26b	South Africa	<N/A>		2026-Present	14

Most assists for the club

Name				Nation		2nd Nation	Time at club	Assists
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Valentino Serfontein 26b	South Africa	<N/A>		2026-Present	34
Thabo Makhanya 26a		South Africa	<N/A>		2026-2029	33
Teboho Dlamini 25b		South Africa	<N/A>		2025-Present	27
Samuel Khumalo 25g		South Africa	<N/A>		2025-Present	25
Siphamandla Pillay 25e		South Africa	<N/A>		2025-Present	21

Supporters:

Summary:

Perre8 · December 16, 2023

Season 6

2030/31

FC Wacker Innsbruck

We started the season in the last qualifying round of the Europa League

We drew Club Brugge from Belgium, we managed to qualify and got this draw for the league phase

So we got a pretty great league phase!

After the league phase, we drew Rennes and got to the next round to get eliminated by Aston Villa

In the competition we were immediately on top of the business untill the winterbreak

With a good preview but not an excellent...would have wanted more A's...

This was the end of the league phase in the Bundesliga

These results led us to a CL spot in the league!! Massive result for the club

Almost forgot to discuss the new intake, we got an absolute beast on right back

and a very good central midfielder

We also got some upgrades to be worked on

So a next phase in the build-up is going to be to get qualified for the Champions League, if we can manage that the money would allow us to get the last and final upgrades to become an Austrian wonderkidfactory

Edited December 16, 2023 by Perre8

OlivierL · December 16, 2023

1 hour ago, Perre8 said:

Season 6

2030/31

FC Wacker Innsbruck

We started the season in the last qualifying round of the Europa League

We drew Club Brugge from Belgium, we managed to qualify and got this draw for the league phase

So we got a pretty great league phase!

After the league phase, we drew Rennes and got to the next round to get eliminated by Aston Villa

In the competition we were immediately on top of the business untill the winterbreak

With a good preview but not an excellent...would have wanted more A's...

This was the end of the league phase in the Bundesliga

These results led us to a CL spot in the league!! Massive result for the club

Almost forgot to discuss the new intake, we got an absolute beast on right back

and a very good central midfielder

We also got some upgrades to be worked on

So a next phase in the build-up is going to be to get qualified for the Champions League, if we can manage that the money would allow us to get the last and final upgrades to become an Austrian wonderkidfactory

Good job ! Dammhyan is really good. Good luck in the UCL !

Anners · December 17, 2023

On 14/12/2023 at 10:46, Anners said:

Previous Post:

2049/50 Season Report

Club: Tranent FC (Scotland)
League: Scottish Premiership

League:

I'd say I was the biggest disaster in the league. Until I say St Johnstone finished 2nd, 4 points behind champions Celtic last year. This league is getting incredibly weird.

The only way I can describe this season, to which I would say 9th is flattering (especially given the points total), is that you see them teams that over achieve and get a European spot, then struggle to handle the games and the demand that comes with it? Yeah that was us. We had a massive injury crisis which led to Fordyce being out for 2/3rds of the season, Frimpong just couldn't stay fit and we couldn't keep the same 11 on the pitch. Add to that, the African Nations meant when Frimpong eventually got fit, he went away for a month too!

Europe:

Oooh, I've got a fancy Europe bit now! For one season anyway...

I was actually reasonably surprised we managed to get through Besiktas, given we were already picking up injuries at the point. We had to give a debut to Callum Liddell (who is mostly just reserves) who promptly scored a 15th minute goal in the away leg in Turkey which actually got us through. Then I don't even know what happened in the Maccabi Haifa game, but that was alright! Though you can mostly sum up my European adventure by saying Tranent 0-2 Fiorentina. Playing a team in the knockouts straight away that you've faced in the League Phase is a bit weird.

Youth Intake:

Very meh, probably the worst I've had in this save so far.

In other youth/team news though, we've had 3 players on the NXGN list:

Although quite soon after this, Blackburn activated Proychev's release clause, so we've sadly lost him. We do seem to have a fairly strong group of left backs, so it isn't a huge loss.

Facilities wise, we've managed to get a new stadium!

Though I'm actually quite gutted by the name - I wanted at least a Legend/Icon named stadium. Foresters Park where we play now is being sold out every game with a 5,000 capacity so this should do nicely. It'll also mean if we get European football again we can play in our stadium as ours was too small.

And finally, we did get a takeover...... but not the Tycoon one sadly. It actually puts to bed the question of ownership as I don't think I've actually had this many attempts before?

That's a lot of screenshots from me for a change - but we seem to be making that next step off the field. Now if we can only match that on the field!

Full History:

Reveal hidden contents

Last 5 Years:

Previous Post:

2050/51 Season Report

Club: Tranent FC (Scotland)
League: Scottish Premiership

League:

Heheheh. That can join my list of "lowest points totals" I've got in this save! I felt like I was gettinc loser, but that came out of absolutely nowhere. It's shocking what having a good goalkeeper can do to a team - especially as I've got a lot of the other pieces! We stumbled over the line a bit, but thanks to almost everyone else having an absolute shocker we managed to bring it home. We actually battled with Dundee United most of the season at the top and I think this is the first season that Rangers & Celtic have finished outside the top 6. The changing of the guard is almost complete!

I actually thought when I'd win the league I'd have more to say - but it's actually felt quite underwhelming in a way. I've said in the past couple of updates that this league can get absolutely wild, especially with the example of St Johnstone finishing 2nd and getting relegated. Like I don't think I've seen this before - this is the preview for next year:

I think I'm equally as likely to get another title than I am to get relegated at this point!

Youth Intake:

Couple of very good prospects - including another keeper! Porteous can actually develop decently and if Pick eventually leaves (he is unhappy but I have got him on a long contract), he should have an adequate replacement this time. This is genuinely the first end of season where the only players that have left the club, I've actually been happy with. I doubt we'll make any headway in the Champions League, but it's bloody good to be there!

Other News:

I mentioned Thomas Scott getting interest, well he has gone from Blackburn to Real Madrid. His value was hovering around £80-100m at times, but sadly came down at the end of the season. He actually handed in a transfer request, so only went for £48m to Real Madrid. Does mean we get a very very nice £24m fee for him - add to the prize money and Champions League money next year and we're looking extremely healthy:

Attributes here for him, if anyone is curious.

I've not put my updated money at the round up below, but I'm just into September whilst writing this (I got a bit excited...) and we're sat at a very healthy £27m bank balance, with facility upgrades coming. If we're not close to the top, we will be at the end of next season.

This might sound a bit stupid, but even though we've won the league I wouldn't put us as a top team yet. We're maybe a year or two away from that, but we're certainly a team who should be challenging for European spots at the very least now.

Full History:

Spoiler

Last 5 Years:

Edited December 17, 2023 by Anners

WhiteCat33 · December 17, 2023

2 hours ago, Anners said:

Previous Post:

2050/51 Season Report

Club: Tranent FC (Scotland)
League: Scottish Premiership

League:

Heheheh. That can join my list of "lowest points totals" I've got in this save! I felt like I was gettinc loser, but that came out of absolutely nowhere. It's shocking what having a good goalkeeper can do to a team - especially as I've got a lot of the other pieces! We stumbled over the line a bit, but thanks to almost everyone else having an absolute shocker we managed to bring it home. We actually battled with Dundee United most of the season at the top and I think this is the first season that Rangers & Celtic have finished outside the top 6. The changing of the guard is almost complete!

I actually thought when I'd win the league I'd have more to say - but it's actually felt quite underwhelming in a way. I've said in the past couple of updates that this league can get absolutely wild, especially with the example of St Johnstone finishing 2nd and getting relegated. Like I don't think I've seen this before - this is the preview for next year:

I think I'm equally as likely to get another title than I am to get relegated at this point!

Youth Intake:

Couple of very good prospects - including another keeper! Porteous can actually develop decently and if Pick eventually leaves (he is unhappy but I have got him on a long contract), he should have an adequate replacement this time. This is genuinely the first end of season where the only players that have left the club, I've actually been happy with. I doubt we'll make any headway in the Champions League, but it's bloody good to be there!

Other News:

I mentioned Thomas Scott getting interest, well he has gone from Blackburn to Real Madrid. His value was hovering around £80-100m at times, but sadly came down at the end of the season. He actually handed in a transfer request, so only went for £48m to Real Madrid. Does mean we get a very very nice £24m fee for him - add to the prize money and Champions League money next year and we're looking extremely healthy:

Attributes here for him, if anyone is curious.

I've not put my updated money at the round up below, but I'm just into September whilst writing this (I got a bit excited...) and we're sat at a very healthy £27m bank balance, with facility upgrades coming. If we're not close to the top, we will be at the end of next season.

This might sound a bit stupid, but even though we've won the league I wouldn't put us as a top team yet. We're maybe a year or two away from that, but we're certainly a team who should be challenging for European spots at the very least now.

Full History:

Reveal hidden contents

Last 5 Years:

What an update! Congrats on the first title and that great sell-on. Hope your board is kind and allows you to upgrade all your facilities. Still amazed how crazy the Scottish league has become for you. Love seeing 5 different champions in 6 years with both old firm teams in the bottom half of the table. Did St Johnstone get a Tycoon or something? Now you just have to get Celtic or Rangers relegated for some true chaos!

Gundo · December 17, 2023

Season two did not end well. We missed out narrowly, but boy oh boy this is a pretty bad squad (especially the defence). I feel I've learnt quite a lot from this first proper save on FM24, though, so I will try again.

Edited December 17, 2023 by Gundo

Anners · December 17, 2023

5 hours ago, WhiteCat33 said:

What an update! Congrats on the first title and that great sell-on. Hope your board is kind and allows you to upgrade all your facilities. Still amazed how crazy the Scottish league has become for you. Love seeing 5 different champions in 6 years with both old firm teams in the bottom half of the table. Did St Johnstone get a Tycoon or something? Now you just have to get Celtic or Rangers relegated for some true chaos!

I think the sell on clause was bigger than actually winning the league club-wise! I was actually a bit gutted Real Madrid only paid £48m for Scott - I thought they'd have held out for more as they actually turned down about £77m from Porto at one stage. AI be a bit weird.

St Johnstone actually got a tycoon in the season they were relegated - I'd completely missed that. Spent about £18m in the January transfer window trying to avoid it but still managed to go down. Only just managed to get up, winning the league by 4 points. I'd kept an eye on their progress but never actually looked about the takeover.

7 different champions in the last 8 years. It's absurd.

Winski · December 17, 2023

Íþróttafélag Reykjavíkur (ÍR)

A good first season at the highest level on Iceland! We finished 8th in the League. So we had to play in the Relegation Group. We finished 3rd, and were never in real danger of relegation. So I'm happy with our first season. In the Cup(Bikarkeppni Mjólkurbikar) we had a fantastic campaign! We made it until the Final. Here we faced Keflavík, but they were too strong: 2-0. So we nearly qualified for Europe. That would be way too soon, but I wouldn't complain if we did.
So things are going well at the moment! We lost our biggest talent Róbert Elís Hlynsson to IK Sirius. The guy was unhappy, as he wanted to play at a higher level. So I had to sell him for about 50k.

Best players
Ísak Óli Helgason - Our best player this season. He scored 18 goals. And that's quite surprising, as he was a backup player last season.
Bergvin Fannar Helgason - Another good season for him, scoring 14 goals in total.
Óli Valur Hrólfsson 24b - Already one of our best players. He's developing into a very good player for us.
Guðni Ásgrímsson 24g - Another youth product, and my first choice GK.

Youth preview & intake
I put my DoF Sigurður Ragnar Eyjólfsson in charge as my HoYD. He gave me a good intake! With 7 Elite Talents I can't complain. And some of them look really talented!

Spoiler

U19's

My U19 squad became champions of Tier 3 and won promotion to the second Tier!

Facilities Upgrades

I was able to upgrade the Junior Coaching budget, so I'm very happy with that. But our Training Facilities have been downgraded, and we don't have the funds to upgrade it soon.

Trophy Cabinet

Progress

tobiahabramson · December 17, 2023

Macclesfield Town FC

Vanarama National League North

Season 9 2032-33

Results

League: Champions - 1st place

FA Cup

Second Qualifying Round: Win 5-0 v. Dereham (Eastern Premier)

Third Qualifying Round: Win 1-0 v. Morepeth (Northern Premier)

Fourth Qualifying Round: Win 4-2 v. Hartlepool (National League)

First Round: Loss 0-2 v. AFC Telford (National League North)

FA Trophy

Second Round: Win 2-1 v. Blyth (National League North)

Third Round: Win 2-1 v. York (National League North)

Fourth Round: Win 1-1p v. Kidderminster (National League)

Fifth Round: Win 2-1 v. St. Albans (National League)

Quarter Final: Win 0-0p v. Warrington Town (National League North)

Semi Final: Win 5-2 v. Billericay (National League South)

Final: Loss 0-3 v. Newport County (National League)

Results

Holy smokes what a season. From being so frustrated last season and almost quitting this save, to going 35-6-5 with 111 points in the league this season was such an incredible turnaround (and of those, 3 losses and 2 draws came at the end of the season, after I had already clinched the title and were playing 2nd stringers and youth).

For the first half of the year, up until new years, I went undefeated, only drawing 2 games while winning 24. I was already 20 points clear of 2nd place at that point and felt pretty sure I was going to win the title easily, which came true. I continued to take a hard line approach to not letting my top talent get poached by upper league teams, which paid off, despite a few grumpy boys. I was able to resign all of my top players to multi year contracts, just waiting for them to be happy to stay at the club around their grumpiness, and clearly the atmosphere didn't affect the club all too much among all the winning.

We also had good runs in both the FA Cup, making it to the competition proper for the first time, and the FA Trophy, where we made it all the way to the final! Our first cup final was not to be, as we lost rather disappointingly 3-0 to Newport County, who had finished 5th in the National League. The experience was a good one and I hope our players learned from it.

This will be my 2nd time in the National League as part of this save (we were promoted in 2025 and relegated in 2027 last time). I hope this time it sticks - my team feels much much stronger than it did the first time, with a strong core of youth. If I do get relegated, I will actually likely start over with a new save.

Striker Diego Mustoe is still far and away the top player at the club right now, already reaching icon status among the club's fans. I've gotten offers for $1m+ for him, but will not give in yet. He was our top scorer with 19 goals and our player of the year with a 7.2 average.

His strike Partner Davide Santangelo also continues to put in good efforts, giving 15 goals and 14 assists

Our young Irish keeper continues to grow into himself, putting in 21 clean sheets this year, a club record.

The difference maker this year though was our midfield and defense really stepped up - we had the best defense in the league, conceding 43 goals in 46 matches. Our offence was also amazing, scoring 109 goals in 46 matches. I guess having the best offence and defense is a good combination? I'll keep trying to do that.

Some crazy how I failed to win Coach of the Season, despite winning coach of the month for August, September, October, November and December. I will never forgive the fellow coaches for that, I hope they all burn in hell.

Best XI

Youth Intake

A fairly average youth intake this year, a few good midfielders came through, giving us somewhat of a glut at the position. Not much to say about it.

(forgot to grab a snap of the intake - I had 2 elite talents).

Edited December 17, 2023 by tobiahabramson

andershs · December 17, 2023

Macclesfield FC (England)
Season 10 - 2033/34 - League Two

Work got in the way, so I haven't been able to continue my save in recent weeks. This is also why the detail level is limited in this season update, as I played the season three weeks ago.
The players at League One and Two level, continued to carry the team, and we were simply the best team in League Two. Gaining back-to-back promotions and titles. Excellent.

League (Results 1, Results 2, Cups, League Chart) - Another fantastic season with direct promotion in the end. We lost three in a row in december, but otherwise, we were really good. This is quite similar to a save I had with Morpeth Town a couple of years ago, where you fly past League Two once
you get out of the Vanarama National League. Because the youth intake facilities are upgraded, and the youth players are on a much higher level than the VNL. In the FA Cup we lost to Preston in the first round. I cannot object to that. I did not prioritise the EFL Trophy using it to get game time for my youth players.

Team (Details) - I think League One is the correct level for many of our best players. So I do not expect another easy promotion next year. That will require better players, I think, or a few years to develop on the current group. Gavin Kershaw - 28E had another very impressive season. Astley Rawson - 28C, Luke Kyle - 28F, Andrzej Gawlik, Cameron Bennett - 33A, Charlie Kiely - 31D, Enock Coo - 29D, Davis Rainford - 32A, Charlie Roddan - 28B, Connor Muir - 26C, Anthony Coyne - 28H and Antoni Petrie - 30A form most of our team. Outside these players, the quality drops significantly.

Facilities - Our training facilities were downgraded due to technological advances. I cannot afford to improve them currently.

Finances - What a disaster. I don't know what happened. Our stable balance of £3.5 million vanished quickly in our first season in the football league. We now have a negative balance of approx. £600.000. It is briefly masked by the £1.8 income for season tickets for next year.
But this will most likely severely hamper our ability to keep hold of the best players. Each month we had a loss of approx. £100.000 with the intake facilities being our biggest expense post.

Youth Intake (Dev. Centre, Preview) - I know my players are at a high level currently, but on first glimpse, this is the worst intake so far. Defender Jay Preece is probably the best player. This is worrying as we haven't really had many players coming through the intakes now for 3 years. Ever since we lost our first HoYD Ben Bailey.
In a couple of season, that might become a big problem. To remedy the poor intakes, before this season, I even changed the HoYD from Paul Ashworth to Scott Mason who has a preferred formation closer to our 4-3-3. But in the short run at least, it seems to have made no difference.

No Transfers in - With Andrzej Gawlik and Charlie Kiely - 31D in central defence, Marcus Hearne - 32B developing nicely and the emergence of Cameron Bennett - 33A, I chose to sell D'Arcy Raglan - 27A to QPR in League One. I don't have high hopes, that he will generate anything substantial in sell on fees.

Goal for next season: Survive in League One. Keep hold of the best players with our ruined economy.

Edited December 17, 2023 by andershs

The7Striker · December 17, 2023

Well, the desire to try this challenge again has returned, and this time it will be in Romania.
Welcome to Kids Tampa Brasov

PandaQC · December 17, 2023

Minebea Mitsumi FC (Japan) - Season 4 - 2027

This was our second season in J1 League and we survived ! Last season we were saved by a win in the promotion/relegation game. This year we avoided relegation by 10 points. This is a relief. Young players were introduced in the rotation and did ok. I gave playing time to promising players with great personalities, and it paid off. They are progressing well and now I am feeling more confident for the next seasons. The team is still pretty weak though - especially when my key players are injured or suspended - and next year will still be about avoiding relegation.

J1 League results

Spoiler

Youth intake

The best intake so far. A lot of players with great potential. Problem is that their position does not match their attributes. DCs are 170cm and 169cm high, while right back is 187cm and slow :rolleyes: . I will need to retrain those players to more suitable positions. But all in all I should not complain. I have a lot to work with.

Spoiler

Finances and facilities

We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And this is maybe the best news of this season. Thanks to J1 League money, our net debt is now zero (we were deep in debt in previous seasons because of the purchase of a new stadium). Now the board accepts my requests to improve infrastructure. But for some reason they don't want to improve Youth Recruitment. This is a mystery. I hope this is not a bug.

Squad

Spoiler

Transfers

Spoiler

Next year preview

Avoid relegation again. The sooner the better, but I know this will still be a struggle. Improve club facilities with J1 League money now that we are out of debt. Develop young talents by giving them playing time.

Recap

CJ'43 · December 17, 2023

Kavala Football Club / Αθλητικός Όμιλος Καβάλα

Season 6 - 2029/30

Schedule / Squad / Transfers / Finances / Manager

Season Summary: this season, we experienced our biggest improvement so far. From barely surviving relegation to fighting for European qualification, we had an amazing first half of the season with some good results, such as a 2-1 win and a draw against PAOK, and a nil-nil draw away at Panathinaikos. We finished the regular phase in 8th place, just two points away from playing for the European qualification spots. The biggest shock was Panathinaikos finishing in the relegation phase, where, with 7 games to play, we secured another season in the first level of Greek football, allowing us to rotate our squad at the end of the season. In the cup, another exit in the fifth round agains a lower level team...

Our goalkeeper, Vasilis Kyrialanis, was our most regular player with an average rating of 7.29, achieving 10 clean sheets and winning 8 Player of the Match awards in 31 games. He also won the Talent of the Year award, Best Goalkeeper of the Year, Greek Player of the Year (Ioannidis was second), and was part of the Best XI in the league (along with 9 Olympiacos and 1 AEK player). I was 3rd in the Manager of the Year award. For the first time since we took control of Kavala, the top goalscorer didn't go to Gekas; instead, Christos Markopoulos was the most effective in front of the goal with 10 goals this season. Unfortunately, he's not renewing his contract and is leaving the club because he wants to play for a bigger club...

Youth intake: another amazing intake, with a lot of players having the potential to be in the first squad in a few years, like Kostas Gialamis 30a, Thanasis Toromanidis 30b, Pavlos Tsamouris 30c, Dimitris Zagliveris 30d, Christos Omiridis 30e, Panagiotis Arnaoutoglou 30f, Christos Titis 30g, Cory Andijanto 30h and Apostolos Paschalakis 30i.

Team history:

Manager history:

dkouv · December 17, 2023

Brora Rangers – Season 9 (2032/33)

Championship A bit of a crazy season. We were in the relegation zone for 3 months, then kept getting better and better, and in the end finished 2nd, qualifying for the playoffs. But we lost to 3rd placed Hamilton, to be fair it was pretty close, better finishing did it for them more than anything else, so overall I’m very happy.

Players The biggest difference this season was that we finally had some defenders, with last intake’s Ryan Nelson 08c (DL) and Kyle Hoban 08b (DC) becoming key players. Quite a few of the squad are now rated decent to good for this league, so we’re definitely improving.

Youth intake (preview) Good again, and we have some defenders - though the top prospects’ personalities aren’t great. RIght-back is by far the worst position in the squad, so I’m gong to retrain Danny Robertson 09a (DL) to play there and hope that he improves.

Facilities/Finances Finances are still terrible, but not much I can do about that.

No transfers in, and no major outs.


Season    |  League       | Pos. |     Europe     |   Best player                    |  Notes
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2024/25   | League 2      |  1   |     n/a        |  Andrew Macrae (ST)              | Promoted
2025/26   | League 1      |  7   |     n/a        |  Andrew Macrae (ST)              |
2026/27   | League 1      |  6   |     n/a        |  Andrew Macrae (ST)              |
2027/28   | League 1      |  5   |     n/a        |  James Wallace (ST)              |
2028/29   | League 1      |  1   |     n/a        |  Andrew Macrae (ST)              | Promoted
2029/30   | Championship  |  6   |     n/a        |  Tony Jukes 05a (ST)             |
2030/31   | Championship  |  8   |     n/a        |  Tony Jukes 05a (ST)             | Won SPL Trust Trophy
2031/32   | Championship  |  4   |     n/a        |  Tom Thomas 07a (ST)             | Lost in playoff 1st round
2032/33   | Championship  |  2   |     n/a        |  Tony Jukes 05a (ST)             | Lost in playoff 2nd round


Facilities
----------
Season    |  Coaching     |  Recruitment      | Training Fac.  | Youth Fac.      |  Stadium
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2024      |  Basic        |  Limited   	      | Basic          |  Poor           |  3000
2024/25   |  Adequate     |  Fairly basic     | Basic          |  Basic          |  3000
2025/26   |  Good         |  Average          | Basic          |  Basic          |  3000
2026/27   |  Excellent    |  Above average    | Basic          |  Basic          |  3000
2027/28   |  Excellent    |  Good             | Basic          |  Basic          |  3000
2028/29   |  Exceptional  |  Good             | Below average  |  Basic          |  3000
2029/30   |  Excellent    |  Good             | Below average  |  Basic          |  3000
2030/31   |  Excellent    |  Good             | Below average  |  Basic          |  3000
2031/32   |  Excellent    |  Good             | Below average  |  Basic          |  3000
2032/33   |  Excellent    |  Good             | Below average  |  Basic          |  3000

glennuk · December 18, 2023

Rein Meer AKA ReinBerg - Season 5 - Japan J3 League - Mid Year Review & Youth Intake

League

We are doing much better this season and have been in and around the playoff spots for the whole season. We have started to integrate more and more youth players and I am excited about the potential in the team. Looks like Gunma are going to run away with the title. AGAIN we are the best attacking team in the league right now.

Youth Preview

After our great youth intake preview last year could we do it again? Yes...Yes WE COULD!!
4 As
and
4 Cs

Slightly worse than last year, but two very strong intakes in a row means that we could be gaining some momentum in the challenge!

We could do with a couple of wingers (especially on the left), so that looks promising.

Youth Intake

So moving straight into the actual intake. What did it look like?

Not quite as strong as last time with only 5 elite talents compared with 7 last year. However I am super excited about an Indonesian and North Korean. Hopefully the ReinBerg name is being spread far and wide! Also they both have potential to get into their national team soon!

Top 3 - Youth Intake 5

Takuya Nishimoto (YP05A)

I am very excited about an attack minded midfielder with a Fairly Professional personality. He could move into the first team straight away, as our CM is pretty weak in terms of squad depth. The legacy players I have are all 1.5* or 2* CA according to our coaches, so Takuya could fit into that group easily. The poor stamina and tackling does need to be improved (even for an attacking CM).

Jo Song-Chol (YP05B)

I debated long and hard about putting this guy as my A player. The professional personality is amazing. He has really good attributes for a winger, a natural left foot and all the potential in the world. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up being my first to get an International Cap. I also have needed a refresh on the left wing, as I don't have any quality on the left (previous youth intake player Saito (YP02A) has not progressed much). So our North Korean winger is going straight into the first team and probably the starting lineup.

Randi Purwanto (YP05C)

An intake with 3 different nationalities as the best three players!!! What a day! Our last intake (intake 4) had two very strong CBs in so Randi does have a way to go before he can break the first team. He does however have good potential, good heading and tackling and really good work rate.

Note: I signed all tagged. I am impressed and fortunate that the best players had the best personalities and the lower players had the worst personalities, it hasn't always shaken up like that for me in the past.

Colossus · December 18, 2023

Sociedad Deportiva Leioa

2035/2036 Mid Season Review / Youth Intake Preview

Incredibly tight at the top, and we can dream about winning the title, right? It does not hurt to dream

Only a "Good" Intake, but I will take a CB and a CDM. We can also do with a couple more wingers, but I am working on a much more narrow tactic that I can deploy if need be

Matsusipida · December 18, 2023

IFK Lidingö season 9 / 2032

We started the season with a nice 11 match unbeaten run. We allways stayed in contention and finally we were tied 1st placed before the last mach against Sylvia who tied the 1st place with us.

Spoiler

We went 2-0 up in the first half but they came back to tie the game 2-2. This means we won the first division south title on goal difference and got promoted.

Spoiler

We scored the most and conceded the least goals in the league.

Spoiler

After securing promotion the board decided to turn professional.

Spoiler

In Swedish cup we defeated premier division side Kalmar FF to qualify to the group stage.

Spoiler

Squad

Jonathan Sletsjøe 30A (MC/AP) was our best player with 17 goals and 13 assists and avg rating 7,65 in 32 games. Hugo Lemne was getting old and declining so we needed some one to step in as CD. Jesper Bergtoft 30E was given a chance as he was the highest potential centreback we had. He also player pretty well.

Mid season we sold one of our best players Emil Starfet 29A as he had declered intentions to leave.

Spoiler

Sletsjøe 30A

Spoiler

Bergtoft 30E

Spoiler

Youth intake

Youth intake was nice. no one to make immediate impact but some nice potential players. Jens Mölder 32A was given some playing time.

Spoiler

Finances are looking good and facilities are still the same.

Spoiler

transfers

Spoiler

Per-Olev is now a club icon

Spoiler

Our attendances declined slighly perhaps due to not having any local enemies in 1st division south.

Edited December 18, 2023 by Matsusipida

BustaRaymes · December 18, 2023

Smethwick Rangers 2031/32

Northern Premier League Division One Midlands

Well, here we are. Our slide down the table resulted in an expected relegation back into level 9.

We were just not good enough. The older OG players are leaving or just not good enough anymore, and our youth players generally can't reach the necessary level.

Squad

After a few rounds we switched to a central style, as our wingers were not up to the task. Ayoola and Feeney won't sign anything but a non-contract so we're constantly stressed about losing them.

Adewumi played his first full season as the chosen heir to Coughlin, he couldn't keep us up but he was decent.

I hate playing a left-footed right back, but we had to. Ware ended up having the highest average rating in defence.

I wasn't sure if Shaughnessy would ever reach the first team, and here we are. 8 goals and 8 assists in his first full season is a nice return.

Nelson had a good season as well, scoring 12. Feeney is starting to get older slowly so it's good to have someone pick up the goalscoring.

I have hopes for Hammerstedt for the future. Some decent games under his belt at just 16 years old.

Transfers

2 OG players left, and they were stars. Rowland was the main man even since the start and it took him way longer to leave than expected. Kirnon had been a mainstay at right back.

Youth intake

More of the same. A lot of PA but little CA and not much to go on as to whether they'll make it.

Abdul Karim looks decent. I have a few players that are somewhat higher in the hierarchy for now, but no doubt he'll feature sooner or later.

At first glance, Lavery lacks so much. I'll be surprised if he ever manages to convince me to change system for him.

Same goes for Lee, although he does have some attributes that I like.

Last but not least: Stern Snape is an abysmal player, albeit with a cool name.

Furthermore

I got a bit annoyed this season but after a short break from Smethwick I resumed with joy. I like the team, I like the players, I like the struggle we're in. I know it's a dead save and only a miracle can make something out of it, but somehow I enjoy this team and save. So it's going to take a sacking or that miracle for me to drop this one.

libbyshuss · December 18, 2023

1 hour ago, BustaRaymes said:

I know it's a dead save and only a miracle can make something out of it, but somehow I enjoy this team and save. So it's going to take a sacking or that miracle for me to drop this one.

it would be an amazing achievement though!

how are you finding the speed of seasons/games? When i tried a tier 10 save it clogged my machine up so much it took hours to generate any results!

libbyshuss · December 18, 2023

France - FC Fleury '91

2026/27 (season 3)

League: France National (tier 3)

Predicted Finish: 18th

Actual Finish: 3rd

What a season! After relegation last season I was told we had the weakest squad in the National division. I could believe that, most of the squad was padded out with 1 star youths to make up the numbers, but our first XI was still pretty strong for this level. As long as we could avoid injuries we'd be fine. And we were, almost getting automatic promotion! we had to settle for the play-offs though, which is still more than I figured we'd get

Play-off final saw us play Amiens in a 2 legged affair. We managed to win both 1-0, thus getting promotion again! If the last 3 seasons have taught me anything, it's that the gap between the French third and second tiers is huuuuuuuuge. But worth it for the extra money, even if it does mean another relegation for us.

Players

Top Scorer: Florent Esor 25A - 14 goals The most pleasing thing about this season was that my best two players were youth players I promoted out of sheer desperation. Esor 25A played all season at AMC and the fact he finished top scorer says way more about my options at striker than it does him, sadly!

Top Assists: Andrea Berti - 18 Assists The only legacy youth player that had any potential at all still wouldn't have got near the first team if I wasn't so desperate. And yet, he was a revelation. Playing left or right wing he chipped in with 11 goals as well as the 18 assists. For stand in while i waited for something better to come along, the lad did alright!

Top Average Rating: Floren Esor 25A - 7.34 Such a good first season from the lad I've already given him a much better, longer contract with an optional 3 year extension. He should be around for a few years yet as there's still a dearth of talent in the youth squad.

Tactics

I built a new tactic around my strengths - the fact that my best 3 players were all centre backs, and I had no full backs to speak of. It worked quite nicely!

Youth

So, would my youth improvements make any difference? Well, the preview suggested it would although the actual intake was a disapointment. I still signed 8 - anyone with a potential of 2* or above basically - just so i could have a youth squad rather than a youth couple.

Could I finally have a half decent striker? 4 determination and casual personality means I'm not banking on it!

Career

Another attempt to stay up in Ligue 2! I won't mind relegation tbh, as long as I don't get sacked and can use the money to get some all important upgrades

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