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Staff changes One of the most consistent complaints I received from players last season was the standards of coaching at the club, which admittedly were poor. That said, I think it's less to do with us having worse coaches compared to other clubs in the league, but rather that the budgetary restraints and unappealing nature of living in Uzbekistan to foreigners making it really hard to attract top coaching talent to the league. Nonetheless, emboldened by my relative strong standing as manager, I decided to undergo a complete overhaul of my coaching team and bring in some new faces to freshen up the coaching setup at Bunyodkor. Two Serbian coaches arrived to help bolster our defensive and goalkeeping coaching, as well as former Costa Rica international Michael Umaña who is a decent all-rounder. My new assistant manager, however, has some clout to his name: Milan Baroš, a man who scored 41 goals for the Czech Republic in 92 appearances and won the Champions League with Liverpool, takes his first steps into a non-playing football career by signing up as my assistant manager at Bunyodkor. He's a bang average coach but has some great mental attributes and, most importantly, very low wage demands. Like myself, he can barely speak a word of Uzbek, but at least with his solid grasp of English we can at least communicate with each other on the touchline. In terms of my own coaching abilities, despite picking up a National B qualification last season my stats are still woeful, and it might be a couple of seasons yet before I can effectively lead training sessions for my own team: I'm also still unable to speak Uzbek to even a basic level despite spending over six months in the country, which in truth probably feels accurate as to how I'd fare in real life. Nonetheless, I'm happy with the changes we've made to our coaching set up and I hope at the very least the players will stop complaining en masse every week about the quality of their training sessions. Pre-season With our new squad assembled, I was excited to get us into some matches and we embarked on a glorious tour of local Tajikistan to play the best sides there before returning to play two of the teams relegated from the Superligasi last season, Bekobod and Andijon. We won all five games without conceding and the new players were integrating well: Pre-season was particularly fun for our star striker Islom Rashidhonov, who bagged himself 11 goals across the five games: It's already starting to feel like our title challenge may well depend on whether we can keep him fit for the entire season as he's pretty much the best striker in the league, as far as I can tell. A lethal advanced forward. The end of pre-season also saw me obtain my National A coaching licence, which was nice to see: I immediately requested that the board let me start on my Continental C licence as they obliged, so at the very least I'll have a few badges under my belt once my time in Uzbekistan comes to an end. Getting underway in the league After a long winter break the new season was finally here, and we welcomed last season's runners up Nasaf Qarshi to the Bunyodkor Stadioni to open the season. It was a tight game with both sides failing to make the breakthrough in the first half, but on the hour mark our talisman Islom Rashidhonov found himself with space in the opposition area and he slotted a finish home into the bottom corner to give us the lead. However, despite holding our opposition at bay for the next quarter of an hour, we managed to find ourselves on the losing end of the game after a curled free-kick and amazing strike from outside of the area consigned us to an opening day defeat: It was a cruel way to lose a game and certainly had me wondering already if my expectations of a title challenge in 2022 might have been a bit premature. Nonetheless, we were thankfully able to recover in our second game against newly promoted Buxoro and ran out 2-0 victors thanks to goals from our new signing Fernando Medeiros, including this superb strike into the roof of the net: Our other foreign signing Mohammed Dawood was able to make an impact in our next game, scoring twice in the first half as we battered Turon Yaypam in the opening 45 to take a 3-0 lead into the break. However, in the second half we managed to give away two goals from range, and in the end only scraped a 3-2 victory against a side much worse than ourselves. This game and the Nasaf defeat has certainly raised some concerns about my team's mentality and its ability to see out matches. Dawood wouldn't get a chance to build on this strong performance, unfortunately, as he picked up an injury while playing for Iraq: That said, we only played two games in the month of March, and as such Dawood didn't miss too many games. The first came at home to Surxon, one of the weaker sides in the league, whom we edged out in a narrow 1-0 win thanks to a goal from Médjo Koné. The Malian has started to settle in Uzbekistan and now has two goals in two games, and his strike was vital in this game to earn us the three points on the night. Up next was an away trip to Navbahor, who finished firmly in mid-table last season despite having one of the biggest wage bills in the league. It was another close game, one we did have the better of, but with the game beginning to peter out we were still deadlocked at 0-0. With 77 minutes on the clock, however, our young captain Rasul Yo'ldoshev stepped up to rifle home a winner from the edge of the box: Yo'ldoshev is one of the best young Uzbek players in the league and it was great to see him stepping up and winning us a game with a superb goal. We had received a bid from Al-Gharafa in the Qatari league for him in the winter window, which I had rejected, but we're now in a position where he wants to leave and move to a better (and richer) league. I had to promise to sell him if a bid of £20k was received for him to keep him happy—even the better players in Uzbekistan go for dirt cheap—and with AFC Champions League winners Ulsan now circling, I may not be able to keep him beyond the summer break. For now though, we'll get the most out of him while we can. The win over Navbahor meant we'd won four of our first five games after the disappointing opening day defeat to Nasaf, and we're looking good in the league table: We haven't been completely convincing so far, but I'm hoping that's primarily down to us signing a lot of new players in the off-season and them needing some time to gel. FC AGMK, last season's winners, have started well and I'm also expecting to see the 2020 champions Paxtakor stay close to the top over the duration of the season. Frustratingly, we now have a 25 (!) day wait for our next game in May, a month in which we play three games, before then having to wait over a month for our next two matches in June. We're therefore only going to be playing 10 of our 26 total games in the first half of the season, which is strange, but seems to be the norm in Uzbekistan judging by our schedule in 2021. We're still due to be drawn in the domestic cup which has a group stage, so that may explain some of the delays, but we shall see. In my next post I'll play through to the summer transfer window and report back on how we're doing.

Thanks John! Appreciate it.

Planning ahead With the Uzbek season ending in November and not picking up again until March, I'm afforded a long spell to take stock of where we're at as a club and begin planning for the 2022 season. Our 4th-placed finish in 2021 was about as good as we could have hoped for given the bottom-half position we occupied when I took over, but we'll be wanting to push on and compete for the league title this year and get ourselves into continental competition. The board have relatively unambitious aims, hoping again for a top half finish. They do expect us to reach the semi-finals of the domestic cup though, which we weirdly didn't participate in last year. I'm happy to work with relatively little expectation as it'll probably be a boost to my reputation if we do manage to achieve the goals I've set for myself. The season preview reflects better where I feel like we're at, and where we should be finishing this year: It's hard to know what to make of our opposition this year. The season favourites Paxtakor, who have the biggest budget and won the league in 2019 and 2020, had a dreadful 2021 campaign and finished 10th, while Navbahor, predicted to finish 3rd, were 8th last season. The three sides who finished above us last year are predicted to finish 4th, 5th and 6th, so I'm expecting a competitive fight at the top of the table for those continental qualification spots. The board provided us with a very workable budget for transfers this winter—around £1m for fees, and around £15k p/w left in the wage budget—so money likely wouldn't be an issue for us in terms of making the moves we need. The bigger issue was the fact that we rely heavily on Uzbek talent due to the harsh registration rules, and many of the better players in the league weren't too keen on joining us. Nonetheless, we were able to make a number of deals that have given us a very healthy-looking 20-man squad for the 2022 season. Transfers I've mentioned the strict rules on foreign talent in Uzbekistan before (no more than 4, and one of which needs to be Asian), and it required me to think hard on how best to fill these foreign player spots for the new season. We had signed Tunisian defender Maroine Mihoubi on a free transfer last summer, as well as Malian winger Médjo Koné, so I had two spots left to fill after we allowed Serbian midfielder Dimitrije Pobulić to leave on a free upon the expiry of his contract at the end of the year. With one of these signings needing to be Asian, I sent my scouts to a few different countries on the continent and moved some of our excess transfer budget into the scouting budget so we could buy a more comprehensive package for the purpose of finding talented foreigners. A number of players caught my eye but we eventually opted to bring in a hot young talent from Iraq: Costing us only £1k in transfer fees, Mohammed Dawood looks like a real bargain and we had to move fast to acquire his signature with a number of bigger clubs in Asia eyeing him up. I was looking for more depth and quality in the attack and the fact that he can play across the frontline was hugely appealing, although I imagine he will be predominantly be used on the left as Islom Rashidhonov, our best signing from the summer break, scored 14 goals in 15 games last season and will be our first choice starter as the lone striker. He has a great mix of technical and physical stats for the level we play at, as well as being a very determined character, so am hopeful that he can light up the league this season. With the Asian spot filled, I could now look further afield for our final foreign player spot. I was keen to sign an attacking midfield option following Pobulić's departure and ultimately went shopping in South America to find this player: Fernando Medeiros joins us from Angra Audax in the Brazilian Série A and upon his arrival becomes, on paper at least, one of the best and most well-rounded players in the league. Capable of playing pretty much anywhere down the centre of the pitch, I'm hoping to primarily utilise him as a left-sided Mezzala in our 4-3-3 formation but will push him up into the #10 spot should we resort to a 4-2-3-1 against sides defending deep. Like Dawood, his versatility made him an ideal target and at £17.5k I feel he represents superb value despite him being our most expensive signing of the window. We made 8 signings in total throughout the window, with the other 6 being Uzbek nationals. I won't share screenshots of each one but would like to highlight one player who I was extremely pleased to get the signature of: We went through last season without a natural left-back, with both of our left-wing backs having no familiarity with playing one position deeper, so was delighted to be able to sign Sherzod Nasrullayev from last season's runners-up Nasaf Qarshi. He's solid defensively, a good passer and a solid crosser of the ball, and will immediately come in as one of the first names on the team sheet. His quality is also highlighted by the fact that he's the only player we have in the Uzbekistan national side, as as well as the only player of ours to feature in the media's Dream XI in the season preview. All-in-all, the transfer window has allowed me to clear out some of the players who didn't make much of an impact last year and add both quality and depth to the squad. Here is, roughly, my best XI going into the new campaign: I intend to stick with a 4-3-3 or a 4-2-3-1 for the majority of the season, although may try and have us be more patient in attack rather than the punt-and-run style I employed last year. On paper we have a squad capable of challenging for the league title, so now it's up to us to actually go out and do it. First up we have a brief pre-season tour of Tajikistan—the only country the board will allow us to travel to—before we welcome last season's runners up Nasaf to the Bunyodkor Stadioni to kick off the league campaign.

Thank you!

I hope this works out for you but it'll be a challenge. If you keep the likes of Saka and Ødegaard around long-term they'll be wanting deals close to 200k p/w before long.

After a good start to the second half of the season, we managed to keep up the good momentum and finished the season strongly with a number of good results. An unfortunate 2-0 defeat at home to Navbahor was the only blight on our record as we won 7 of our last 8 games to conclude the 2021 season: This superb end to the campaign secured us a 4th-placed finish in the league table: We finished one place and three points behind 3rd place, who qualify for the AFC Cup, but given the poor first half of the season the club had had I think a 4th-placed finish was about as good as we could have hoped for. Our progress since I took over can be seen in how we rose up the league table, with 11 wins in 16 games: I'm very satisfied with the start to my managerial career, and am glad I choose to come to Uzbekistan to start this challenge. Bunyodkor's place in the league was not representative of the quality of the squad and I believe with some decent business in the transfer market during the off-season, we should be able to make a serious title challenge in my first full season with the club. The eventual winners of the league were FC AGMK who won their maiden title, with reigning champions Paxtakor finishing a disappointing 10th. I expect them to improve next season, as well as Navbahor, as the pair of them have the two biggest wage spends in the division. We have a healthy budget to play for at this level ourselves with a few thousand to spare in the weekly wage budget and over a million available to spend on transfer fees, and my plan will be to try and poach some of the better talent from other Uzbeki clubs to give us a boost for 2022. The strict registration rules mean we may look outside of Uzbekistan for one or two players, but the majority of the potential acquisitions will need to be homegrown talent. I've already lined up a couple of deals and have a good idea on which players I'd be happy to see leave. With only being able to register 20 players, I can't afford to have any passengers. In terms of my own career, I was able to get my first coaching badge under my belt with the National B licence before the end of the season and have already begun work on my next one: I'll definitely be looking to see my contract with Bunyodkor out, which expires next season. If we're able to qualify for the AFC Champions League then I may look for a contract extension to see how we're able to fare in continental competition in 2023, although that may depend on what sort of jobs become available and if my reputation has improved enough for me to get a bigger job. I've been keeping my eye on the job centre to see what roles are available but there's not much that has caught my eye: For the time being the roles available seem to be at middling clubs in leagues no better than our own, or clubs towards the bottom of stronger leagues. While getting a role in the likes of Qatar, Iran and South Korea is likely going to be the ultimate aim, for the time being I figure it's better to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond with a great chance of domestic silverware and continental qualification. In the Champions League, Ulsan won their second consecutive title after defeating Al-Sadd of Qatar in the final. I hope that I'll be managing in a final before long but for now, dominating in Uzbekistan is the main target.

The mid-season break had allowed me some time to evaluate my squad and make some deals, as well as giving the players a holiday after a disappointing first half of the season. Upon their return I decided we'd be best served playing a couple of friendlies in order to regain some match sharpness. We played Qo'qon and Nasaf, two of the better sides in the league, and held our own in both games despite drawing 0-0 and losing 3-2. This gave me some confidence that the players we have should be able to secure us a top half finish with ease, even if a push for the title or continental qualification is out of our grasp for this campaign at least. Frustratingly, our new signing Médjo Koné injured himself in the second friendly and it wasn't as minor an injury as I'd hoped: Injuries are part and parcel of the game but with only having a squad of 20 players, a player in a certain position being unavailable for a few games really hurts squad depth. We nonetheless went into the second half of the season with confidence and the results have begun to swing our way: We started with a great home win over reigning champions Paxtakor, with new signings Maroine Mihoubi and Islom Rashidhonov both getting on the scoresheet to earn us the victory. The following four games were all played away from home, with the most impressive of those victories coming against Lokomotiv Toshkent who sit second in the league. Rashidhonov, who we signed from Lokomotiv in the summer window, bagged himself a wonderful brace against his former club and was already beginning to repay the money we'd spent to bring him in. His second goal which secured the win was a fine finish into the bottom corner: A draw against Surxon, a team close to the bottom of the table, was disappointing but after trailing late on we had equalized to earn ourselves the point. We got back to winning ways against Turon before heading to Nasaf, who sit third in the league table, and nabbing a draw. It was a fortuitous point but a header from new centre-back Davron Xoshimov was enough to get us a result. This leaves us sitting 6th in the table with 10 games to play: We may have only moved up two places since the summer break but crucially we are now 11 points clear of Turon in the relegation play-off position, having only been 3 points clear going into the mid-season break. I think it's going to be tough to catch up with the three teams at the top of the table but we've a relatively kind end to the season, so I'm not ruling anything out at this stage.

My first game in management came against Adijon, the worst team in the league who'd drawn one and lost nine of their opening ten games. This was a welcome debut fixture and the game proved eventful, with us running out as 3-0 victors as the home side ended the game with only eight players: This was the final game before we entered the mid-season break, leaving us in 8th place: With only the top two places granting qualification to the AFC Champions League for 2022, I didn't have any expectations of continental football next season but felt with a strong second half of the season it wasn't unreasonable to expect us to finish at least 5th, with Qo'qon occupying that position currently and only four points separating us from them. We'd need a good transfer window to make this possible, however. Squad review The Uzbeki Superligasi is a relatively straightforward league in FM terms, but we are limited to registering only 20 players for our league campaign. The league also allows for nine substitutes to be named, meaning that the only way to name a full bench (as far as I can tell) is to have all 20 of your players fit and available, as there also doesn't seem to be an option to field young players who don't need to be registered. I noticed immediately that the squad was bloated as we had a number of players who weren't registered, including having five goalkeepers on our books. The 20-player registration limit meant that I had to be picky about who I wanted to keep and who I needed to move on, especially as I wanted to make some additions in this first window. The registration rules only allow for 4 foreign players in our squad, with only 3 of those permitted to be non-Asian, so I'd be primarily relying on Uzbeki talent to build my squad around. First though, I'll share some of the better players already at the club who'll be staying for this season at least: Rasul Yo'ldoshev is the best player at the club according to my coaches despite only being 20, and it's hard to argue. He's not a particularly well balanced player but his passing and technique means he'll likely be the creative hub of our side. Having a player with high determination in the centre of the pitch is also key given the relatively poor mental stats I have in the squad. One of the players taking one of our foreign spots is Dimitrije Pobulić, a Serbian midfielder who joined us this season from Armenian outfit Ararat. As a more-well rounded midfield option who's a decent finisher, I'll be looking for him to play alongside Yo'ldoshev and be more of an attacking threat. While my scouts don't rate him too highly, Avazbek O'lmasaliyev is a quality young full-back for this level who has great pace and a decent tackle on him. He'll be my starting right-back for the foreseeable future. Transfers As mentioned, our squad was bloated as well as being imbalanced, with us having tons of options in goal and in midfield but little depth at centre-back, on the wings, and in the striker position. I moved ten players on and brought in five players of my own during the mid-season break (although the window is still open, so one or two incomings and departures may still occur): I was keen first to address the lack of depth in defence, and brought in two centre-halves who should provide us with some stability at the back: Maroine Mihoubi was a free agent after his contract with PFC Lviv of Ukraine had expired, and I felt the Tunisian was worth bringing in despite him taking up one of our precious foreign spots in our squad as well as him becoming our best paid player on £1k a week. He's a really well balanced defender who is better on the ball than most in the division, and I'll be hoping he can establish himself as a key player at the club. I'll also be banking on him developing a great partnership with Davron Xoshimov, another new arrival, who joins us from fellow mid-table outfit Navbahor. With 28 national team caps to his name, his experience is welcome in what is a pretty young squad I have here at Bunyodkor. I've brought in Islom Rashidhonov to spearhead our attack, with the 23-year-old Uzbeki having already scored 8 goals in 13 games at Lokomotiv Toshkent this season. He is a pretty limited striker but with good acceleration, heading, first touch and finishing, he should be able to bag plenty of goals for this side. Comfortably our most expensive signing at £115k paid in transfer fees, Médjo Koné joins us from USC Bassam of the Ivory Coast to give us some quality down the flanks. The Malian winger is a great dribbler and I'm hoping he can become of the best attacking players in the league. While my scouting range is very limited, I was able to find the player by moving a bulk of my transfer budget over to my scouting budget, and paying for the world package for just the month. I still have money to work with but the 20-player registration limit means I'm unlikely to make further moves. I'm pleased with the players I've brought him and am hoping I can get us playing some good football with the talent we now have at my disposal. Tactics I haven't given much thought to my tactical set up just yet, but am planning on playing with a basic 4-3-3 in these coming weeks and seeing how it goes. I'll be looking to counter down the flanks and hit early crosses into our new striker Rashidhonov, while making the most of the strength with have in the middle of the park. It seems that a lot of the teams in our division play a basic 4-4-2 so I'm hoping having more men in the centre of the park will pay off for us. In the next update, we'll get back underway in the Uzbeki Superligasi and see how the team handles itself as we strive to move up the table.

Hello everyone! After spending a number of seasons managing my beloved Arsenal and winning everything numerous times, I fancied myself a totally different challenge and decided to finally undergo a Pentagon save of my own. I've been playing Football Manager for 15+ years and have always liked the idea of a true journeyman save, but have never really given it a go, so figured it was finally the time. I'm sure everyone here is familiar with the challenge but if not, the long and short of it is that you need to try and win the top continental prize in all five continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America) while starting out as unemployed with no badges and no prior experience. To be forthright, I am playing with attribute masking off and I do have the in-game editor enabled due to my own personal preferences. I don't use the editor to my own benefit but do like to have it available primarily for cosmetic changes. Ultimately I am not playing this save to brag about how good I am or anything like that, and if folks deem this not to be a pure Pentagon save then so be it. I just want to travel the world, win some trophies, and have fun. Game setup I have added a significant number of custom leagues to give myself more options in terms of clubs when on my adventure, especially in Africa and Asia. I've 100+ leagues set to playable or view-only and will change this over time as I move from continent to continent. I decided to start my career in Asia, so I have made virtually all the leagues I have downloaded playable, including the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Thailand, Syria and Iraq, along with the leagues that are playable through the base game including Australia, China and South Korea. To try and make the game world as balanced and competitive while I'm in Asia, I've kept a number of the top European leagues playable, along with the likes of Egypt, Morocco, and DR Congo in Africa, and Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and the USA in the Americas. Once I depart Asia I will make most of the leagues there view-only and more leagues playable in the next continent I visit, which will likely be Africa. I'm starting the save with around 175k~ players loaded. Let's hope my laptop can handle it. Finding a job I am playing as myself, starting as someone with no badges and no experience in football, so my stats are understandably woeful: In terms of allocating my attributes, the main thing I focused on was boosting my adaptability a bit, as I felt that'd be important for someone managing in a far flung land. As a Brit who can only speak English, my language skills certainly weren't going to win me any favours. My medium term aims for the save was to get myself a job in a middling Asian division, earn myself some coaching badges while building my reputation, and then I'd look to get to into one of the better leagues where winning the AFC Champions League was more likely: The Chinese, Qatari and South Korean top divisions are the three top-ranked leagues in Asia at the start of the save, while the Arabian Gulf League of the UAE and Persian Gulf Pro League of Iran are also strong. I don't have the J-League of Japan loaded due to licensing issues so going there won't be an option, disappointingly. When I booted up the game and headed to the job centre and thankfully saw that there were plenty of job opportunities across the Asian continent: I was tempted to see if I could fluke myself a job in Iran and start off on a strong footing, but that seemed unlikely, and I instead applied for jobs in Bahrain, Indonesia, Iraq, and Uzbekistan. My lack of experience, language skills, or any semblance of coaching ability didn't seem to hinder me, and I received job offers from all four clubs. In the end though, I decided Central Asia would be my first port of call... Underway in Uzbekistan I started this challenge to try something new, and managing in Uzbekistan is about as foreign as it gets for me. Bunyodkor Toshkent are an interesting team; a club founded in 2005 with 5 first division titles to their name already: Digging a little deeper, the club has an interesting and somewhat controversial past. This Guardian article from 2009 is a good read and explains in more detail why the club gained some international attention: Clearly there were attempts to make Bunyodkor an Asian superb club, but after winning five league titles in six seasons between 2008 and 2013, they haven't won another. In the 2020 season they finished 4th and around the mid-way point of the 2021 season, they find themselves in 9th place as I step in as coach. We have ourselves a 34,000-seater stadium, albeit with an average attendance of only 1300 fans, along with some pretty healthy finances, so I should be able to get the club back up on its feet and competing at the top end of the table if things go well. The board have requested that I finish in the top half of the 14-team Uzbeki first division, which should be doable based on the strength of the squad and our pre-season prediction of a 5th placed-finish: In my first game, we're due to face bottom of the league Andijon before we head into the mid-season break. The board have given me a very generous budget of over £2m so I should be able to make some moves that'll help us finish higher up the league in the second half of the season. I'll go into more detail about the squad I have at my disposal and and the transfer moves I've made in my next post.

Just a note that I've ended my save, or at least put it on indefinite hiatus for the time being. After so many seasons I've lost my desire to keep playing the save although may return to it in future. I did finish the 2027/28 season so will do a final update at some point. I've instead decided to start a Pentagon save attempt, which is something I've never done before. Currently managing in Uzbekistan so couldn't be further away from consistent Premier League and Champions League titles with Arsenal. 😅