Sean3h
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Posts posted by Sean3h
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The name of my assistant manager is giving me some fantastic headlines
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Arsenal - 2021/2022 Season
1st September 2021
The transfer window has now slammed shut, and I've done my absolute best to restructure the club.
Firstly, almost the entirety of the backroom staff were let go. I've brought in my own people, and our staff comparison is now looking quite nice.
I then set out to get rid of as many players as I could. We managed to offload the following:
Our incomings were as follows (I've got no idea why Tierney is showing there considering he's been here a while. Bug?):
Out with the old, in with the new, or "Du" in this case. Dušan Vlahović comes in to add something a little different to our attack. I'm planning on playing 2 strikers, and with Lacazette out of contract I wanted to make sure I got someone in for the long term. My striking options are Vlahović, Aubameyang, Karim Adeyemi and Balogun for this season, and I'm hoping to offload Auba soon. The big money maker was Nketiah, who Newcastle paid a whopping £32m for, rising to £39m.
In midfield, we didn't make any major changes. Burak İnce will join in January, and we also brought in Nico Serrano to rotate on either wing.
Defensively, I felt like I needed a centre back after Pablo Marí was shipped out. Tanguy Nianzou came in to replace him.
In goal, I struggled to offload Bernd Leno. We accepted a bid on deadline day, initially on loan with a mandatory fee, but he rejected it. In terms of targets, I came across Lucas Cañizares who seems to have decent potential but isn't really interested in joining yet. Maarten Vandevoordt came in instead, although I'm still going to be chasing after Cañizares in future windows.
All of this is leaving the squad looking like this:
We started the season without Saka, Tierney and Ødegaard due to injury. Our results so far are as follows:
PL vs Tottenham (H) - 3-2 win. Vlahović managed a goal and an assist on his debut against our rivals, with Aubameyang getting the other 2. We let them have more of the ball (we only had 42% possession) however our xG of 3.31 absolutely dwarfed their 0.86. We were looking pretty good for a 3-1 win before Tomiyasu and Nianzou had a mix up in defence, allowing Kane to score. All in all, a good first result as manager!
PL vs Chelsea (A) - 2-0 win. Another goal for Vlahović and a penalty save for Ramsdale. Pépé scored our second goal in a game where we again gave up large amounts of the ball (we only had 41% this time) but we were lethal. I'm thinking this may be the way forward until we've been able to significantly strengthen the rest of the team.
EFL vs Cheltenham (A) - 6-0 win. With the team struggling with a few injuries, this game gave me a chance to rotate. As there are still a couple of holes in the squad, we gave starts to Joel López, Jack Henry-Francis and Joel Ideho. Ideho unfortunately picked up an injury in the 23rd minute, but Henry-Francis scored his first goal for the club in the 31st. The other goal scorers were Martinelli (3), Gabriel and Balogun. Smith Rowe bagged a 10.0 rating thanks to his 11 key passes & 4 assists.
PL vs Leeds (H) - 2-2 draw. A disappointing result considering we were 2-0 up within 37 minutes. Vlahović scored again to take his tally to 3 goals in 3 games. Martinelli bagged the other goal for us.
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Planning on starting my proper save today - have people had much luck offloading players for? In my beta save, I was only able to offload Chambers (£15m) despite offering out Leno, Kolasinac, Mari, Cedric, Elneny and Lacazette.
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32 minutes ago, SortitoutsiVP said:
Oh wow £83M. I can easily afford it, I just don't know if I want to spend all that!
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I think I'm now at the stage where I may need to sell Bernd Leno. I didn't really want it to get to this point, but Bayern Munich have just offered me £50M up front, rising to £66M. Feels hard to turn down for a 31 year old goalkeeper.
Starting to look at potential replacements, so far I've got the following players on my shortlist:
Gerónimo Rulli - will cost £31.5M from Villarreal. He's been decent for them since signing - last season he only managed 8 clean sheets though. I think he'd be a decent stop-gap while I wait for one of my youngsters to develop.
Kepa Arrizabalaga - Didn't exactly do great at Chelsea, but he's not going to be that expensive and he managed 15 clean sheets last season for Monaco. A bid of £22M (rising to £39M based on appearances) will be enough to bring him in.
Aaron Ramsdale - I've got no idea how much Sheffield Utd want for him, but he's really promising in my save and was in the England squad for the World Cup. I have a feeling he'll be £50M+.
I'm then in the territory of insane deals, like £118M for Unai Simon, £120M for Jan Oblak, etc. I don't think I can bring myself to pay that much for a goalkeeper...
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2022/2023 season review
We made very few transfers this season, instead deciding to focus on youth. We narrowly missed out on the league, with 3 losses and 3 draws in our final 10 games. Despite this, we managed to win the FA Cup and Champions League. Cristiano Ronaldo ended up being the glue that stuck it all together, as he was my top scorer in all competitions.
Transfers
Squad stats
Competitions
Youth Players
Due to how much time and effort I'm putting into my younger players, I thought I'd give a little look at how each of my regens are looking each season.
Declan Larkin
Carlton Rayner
Logan Smith
New people for next season are...
Levent Kaya
Tomas Lagerblom
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2021/2022 season review
My second season is now finished and it brought us straight back down to earth. We didn't win any competitions this year (although we did come close to winning the league) and our attackers just didn't perform anywhere near the level I was expecting of them. Before the season started, I had a bid accepted and contract agreed with Dominic Calvert-Lewin, before deciding to cancel the deal at the last minute. In hindsight, this was a pretty poor decision as we didn't score as many goals as we should have done.
Transfers
I went into this season with the main aim of planning for the future. I brought in some younger players for my U23/U18 squads and moved on a bunch of the kids that weren't going to get anywhere near the first team (with juicy 50% next sale clauses in every deal!)
Squad stats
As I mentioned earlier, I was disappoted with our attackers this year. Aubameyang was the only player with more than 15 goals, and I think this is why we didn't win anything. Lacazette was given a new deal early on in the season and then proceeded to just stop scoring goals. He picked things up a little later on in the season, but it really wasn't good enough from him. Buendia also failed to live up to the heights of last season, but he still had the highest average rating of all of our attacking players.
Competitions
Plans for next season
I've already agreed one deal ahead of next season - Cristiano Ronaldo will be joining on a free transfer. When I saw our struggles in front of goal, I panicked a bit and quickly made the decision to sign him. I'm hoping he will be good enough to last me a few years while youngsters like Logan Smith (a regen I signed from Forest) develop. Hopefully Ronaldo will be a good influence on some of the younger guys as well. Other than that though, I've got nothing else agreed at this stage. Ainsley Maitland-Niles wants to leave, and as he's worth £55M I'm going to try to cash in on him. I feel bad about losing one of our home grown lads, but he's just not as good as Tierney and I can't see him getting game time anywhere else. Joe Willock could also see his time at the club come to an end, although he's more likely to go out on loan. I also intend to sell Kostas Mavropanos, Pablo Mari and Lucas Torreira. Granit Xhaka had a mandatory fee as part of his loan deal, and he'll be officially joining Monaco.
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I'm going to do a write up at the end of my second season (should be this afternoon) but had to get a little post in early... I've just had my youth intake for the year and think I've possibly got my central midfield sorted for years to come.
Firstly, meet Declan Larkin. According to my head of youth development Sebastian Pait, Larkin "looks as if he could possibly emerge as one of the best players of his generation". His physical stats leave a little to be desired, but his mentals look decent.
Secondly, we have Carlton Rayner. Not quite as highly rated, but he looks like he could be a very good partner to Larkin. He's got the aggression, bravery and work rate to carry out the "dirty" parts of the game.
I'm really looking forward to developing these 2, and I intend to get them both involved in the first team as soon as I can.
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2020/2021 season recap
I've now finished my first season and I think I can be pretty pleased with how it went in general. We were absolutely fantastic up until April, where the issues with our squad started to become more apparent. A pretty poor final month saw us just about winning the FA Cup (penalties after a 0-0 draw with Leeds) and losing the Europa League final vs Roma (a 1-0 loss in extra time) so I'm a little disappointed there.
Competitions
As you'll see in the below picture, We won the league. we were comfortably ahead for quite a while, but dropped points against Sheff Utd, Liverpool, Aston Villa, Man Utd and Leicester in April & May to take things down to the final day, where we comfortably beat West Ham 4-0 to bring the title home.
Player performance
Some of our signings ended up performing really well and were instrumental in our success. Emi Buendia ended up playing 41(9) games in total, racking up 13 goals and 24 assists, including a chart topping 21 in the league. Nicolo Rovella ended up getting lots more games than expected, starting 19 games and being subbed on in a further 16. He managed 1 goal and 7 assists, with an average rating of 7.20 which isn't too bad considering he's 19 and this is his first season in England. Yusuf Demir wasn't quite so impressive, but he still got plenty of game time. He played 43 in total (20 as a substitute) and got 6 goals and 6 assists. I'm not too unhappy here because he's only 17 and has shown real signs of improvement.
The full squad stats are below.
Transfers
In the January window, we ended up bringing in Yunus Musah for £15M, as well as Isco on loan with an option to buy for £34M. Yuriel Celi joined after his contract with his previous club expired, but he was shipped straight out on loan to gain a work permit.
Plans for next season
The end of this season confirmed what I was already expecting - I desperately need some more depth. In terms of outgoings, I'm going to attempt to move on Willian, Jack Wilshere, Sead Kolasinac and Mohamed Elneny at least. I'm going to be open to offers for pretty much anyone, so it may be that we see more movement than expected. For incomings, I've been trying sine January to tempt Memphis Depay to come here, but he's been wanting to wait until his contract expires. He's my priority and bringing him in will allow me more flexibility to lose one of Aubameyang and Lacazette if the right offer comes in. Sandro Tonali is another I've been keeping an eye on, while players like Eduardo Camavinga and Mikel Oyarzabal are interesting me as well. A reliable backup keeper is required - I've got absolutely no faith in Runarsson and he didn't play a single minute of football for me this season. I'll be keeping an eye on the relegated teams and may try to bring someone like Nick Pope in if he decides he doesn't want to play Championship football.
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The window has now slammed shut and... It didn't exactly go to plan. This first update is going to be a bit of a wall of text, but future ones should be a bit nicer!
We ended up doing the following business:
In
Wilfried Gnonto - £700k (rising to £800k) - Zurich - This guy looks like he has some decent potential. He's only 16, and I'm aiming on having him develop with my U18 and U23 teams for now.
Jack Wilshere - Free - We all know Jack. I needed some midfield cover and as he's free, I was more than happy to bring him in.
Andrea Papetti - £1.8M - Brescia - Really promising young defender. He'll be spending the first season out on loan.
Nicolo Rovella - £1.8M - Genoa - He'll be spending this season with us rather than out on loan - I intend to slowly bed him in at DLP, mainly giving him minutes in cup games.
Martin Palumbo - £900k - Udinese - The Italian spree continues. He looks like he's got some really promising stats and hopefully he can develop into a really good partner for Rovella. Like Papetti, he'll be spending the season out on loan.
Yusuf Demir - £34M - Rapid Wien - Yusuf was a little bit of a panic signing. I needed an attacking midfielder to replace the outgoing Ozil, and I was able to bring him in with the majority of the money being spread out in installments. I'm not expecting him to set the world on fire straight away, but he'll be a rotation option for the first season or two while he develops.
Emiliano Buendia - £50M - Norwich - I was panicking a bit, as mentioned above with Demir. My intention was to buy both of them, but Norwich wouldn't budge at all and I couldn't afford him with the budget I had left over. I decided to go with one last throw of the dice and ask the board to handle it, which they did. It's a little more expensive than I'd have liked, but I've been a fan of Emi for a few years and I'm hoping he can make the step up.
Out
Matt Macey - £240k - Austin FC - Matt was never going to play for me, so I decided to bring some cash in while I still can.
Cedric - £17.25M - Crystal Palace - Cedric is an acceptable backup, but I'd much rather give minutes to AMN.
Sokratis - Loan (£575k) - Real Valladolid - I'm disappointed with this one. Early in the window it looked like I was getting £5M for him, but he ended up rejecting both Burnley and Brighton.
Andrea Papetti - Loan (£54k) - Burnley - As mentioned above, the intention was to loan out Papetti this year. He'll be spending the season as a squad player at Burnley, so should hopefully get some PL minutes.
Martin Palumbo - Loan (£56k) - Colchester - Palumbo will be getting minutes at a lower level, but he's considered a regular starter there. Colchester have good facilities, so hopefully they'll be able to help him develop nicely.
Mesut Ozil - £12M - Napoli - I did it. I'm not convinced with this one as it left me scrambling slightly, but I felt the need to cash in while I still could. Hopefully he doesn't leave too big a hole in the squad.
David Luiz - £5M - Real Sociedad - Similar to the other aging players I sold, I wanted to cash in and get money while I still could. I'm sure I could have used David this year and he'd have performed fine, but his minutes can now go to Holding, Chambers and Saliba.
Sead Kolasinac - Loan (£575k) - Betis - This loan comes with an optional fee of £27M. I initially had an offer of £11M for him, which I rejected. He's still got a couple of years left on his deal, so if Betis decide not to buy him I'll move him on in the summer.
Mohamed Elneny - Loan (£325k) - Leeds - Again, another optional fee. This time it's £23.5M. He's in the same boat as Kolasinac - I'll be selling him either way at the end of the season.
This now means the squad ends up looking much younger - it's definitely a weaker squad than I'd have liked, but this is (hopefully) the first step in the right direction. Young players with plenty of drive and room to grow, with some older players to guide them through.
GK: Leno | Runarsson
RB: Bellerin | Chambers
CB: Holding | Gabriel | Mustafi | Mari | Saliba | Chambers
LB: Tierney | AMN
CM: Partey | Xhaka | Ceballos | Rovella | Wilshere | Willock
RW: Pepe | Saka | Demir
AM: Buendia | Willian | ESR
LW: Aubameyang | Nelson | Martinelli
ST: Lacazette | Nketiah | Balogun
August & September recap
The first couple of months went... ok? Considering our relatively poor transfer window, I'm not too disheartened. Buendia wasn't signed in time for the Community Shield game vs Liverpool, and unfortunately we ended up losing 3-1. We were slightly unfortunate to lose I feel - we had a goal disallowed and pretty much matched them in terms of xG. Promising signs considering the squad overhauls.
Our other results were:
Arsenal 5 - 1 Southampton (PL)
Leeds 0 - 2 Arsenal (PL)
Fulham 1 - 4 Arsenal (EFL)
Arsenal 9 - 0 Fulham (PL)
Arsenal 5 - 0 Birmingham (EFL)
Some of our key players so far are:
Aubameyang - 4 games - 5 goals/3 assists
Lacazette - 4 games - 7 goals/1 assist
Buendia - 3(1) games - 2 goals/3 assists
Nketiah - 2(1) games - 4 goals
Demir - 2(3) games - 3 goals/1 assist
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The time has come to start a new Arsenal save. My intention at the moment is to play a possession heavy 4-2-3-1 and I'm intending on making some big changes during the opening window.
I'll post a little write up once the window is over, but I'm interested in seeing what you guys think about this offer for Mesut Ozil:
£6M up front, £6M over 6 months, 170k wage contributions. He's valued at £12.75M so I'm almost getting his full value. As he'll be going on a free in the summer, I ideally want to cash in. This will save me a huge chunk of his wages over the course of the season and potentially give me some transfer funds. I'm intending to play with an AP(A) so he's someone that could easily play there for me. Perhaps it's worth trying to squeeze a little bit more money out of Napoli.
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1 hour ago, BrickCommo23 said:
That's a stonking season - well done.
Have you shared your system on here before? If so...I'd be interested!
I'm coming towards Christmas on season 2 and averaging circa 64% possession and sitting top
64%! Wow, that's great - what are you using for that? I saw your tactical idea in the total football thread (the 4-1-2-2-1), is that what you ended up going with?
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1 hour ago, Tee2 said:
So a quick question for those of you who have played FM for many years, and perhaps have managed Arsenal throughout that time also - do you have a favourite Arsenal team from all those past editions? After all, the current set-up is unlikely to warm many a Gunner's heart, is it?
Obviously any side from the late 1990s to the Invincibles has to be a shoo-in. What a team. I loved the CM3 side, just after Anelka had left and you got to manage the old guard defence, Bergkamp, Overmars, Vieira, a certain Thierry Henry had just joined.... But I think my pick would be the FM 2009 team. This was a side constructed by Wenger when transfer funds were tight as the club's finances were tied in with their new stadium. As such it was a group of players that had mainly been developed from within. Fabregas was just about still around. Arshavin and Nasri were present, and Adebayor was still considered more of an up and coming talent than what he turned out to be. Oh, and Robin van Persie. But the real strength of that side was the sheer amount of homegrown talent on offer - from memory you had Toure, Clichy, Djourou, Gibbs, a very young Ramsey, Denilson, pre-injuries Diaby, Song, Bendtner. It was such a neat base upon which to build, and I wish he'd managed to hold that group together as they could have built up into something special.
Mine is similar to yours, but probably a year earlier. I was a huge, huge fan of the Rosicky - Flamini - Fabregas - Hleb midfield. If I could recreate that now I would in a heartbeat!
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I play a Norwich City game on every version of FM and he always seems to perform well. I don't think his ceiling is particularly high, but because of his physicals he's always done a really good job for me. Will be interesting to see if he develops any better in this edition of FM, looks like he's doing brilliantly for you though. What role(s) are you playing him in?
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On 14/11/2020 at 12:51, BrickCommo23 said:
Great work - what sort of system have you got on the go?
I'm currently using a possession heavy 4-1-2-2-1/4-3-3. When I've got myself an AMC I want to build the team around though I'm planning on changing to a 4-3-1-2 or 4-2-3-1, I just didn't want to put all of my eggs in the Ozil basket.
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Season 1 Review
Ok, so the 20/21 season is now out of the way and it went... A LOT better than expected. I'm almost a little disappointed, as I was expecting it to take a year or two to get to where we are.
Competitions
Overall we can't have any real complaints here. We did need to rely on 3 penalty shootout wins though, one in each of the cup competitions. I can't quite believe we managed to win the league. We were quietly doing our own thing for most of the season, but grabbed our chance at gameweek 34 and held on for dear life! Despite losing to Spurs in the last game, we were still able to lift the trophy in their ground as United also failed to win. We were pretty unfortunate in the Europa League final, coming up against Barcelona and losing 1-0.
Transfers
Squad stats
I'm really happy with how a few of our players did. Nelson didn't play much earlier in the season, but as we can see by his stats he made it very hard to leave him out. Ozil was alright as a RPM - I didn't want to completely leave him out due to his wages and while I'll be sad to see him go at the end of his contract it will be nice to free up the £350k/w. Ceballos was really good as well. His stats aren't world beating, but he scored some really important goals to win me multiple games. Hauksson is the first youth intake player to make it into my squad - the 16 year old 'keeper has a lot more potential (4.5 stars) than Runarsson, so I'd rather give him the minutes to aid his development.
End of season awards
The team did pretty well here. Eric García picked up the PFA Young Player of the Year award, Bernd Leno got the golden glove and I picked up manager of the year. We also had Bernd Leno, Gabriel, Hector Bellerin, Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in the team of the season. Andrea Papetti picked up the EFL Young Player of the Year award while out on loan as well.
Plans for next season
David Luiz is already on his way out. He'll be joining Flamengo on a free transfer. Young Turkish midfielders Omer Beyaz and Emre Demir are both joining us on free transfers when their contracts expire. I've also agreed to bring in another newgen player - Omar Guthrie will be joining us from TNS.
If I can renew the Ceballos loan deal I will, as I think I'll be needing him in the season ahead. Ozil will be released unless he agrees to drop his wages massively. Lacazette will be allowed to leave, and I will also be trying to sell Willian before his value drops too much due to his age. Guendouzi and Torreira will have a chance to play with the team over pre-season as I'm looking a little short in midfield, but I'll probably be looking to bring in at least 1 central midfielder.
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I'll do a full write up at the end of the season, but Lacazette has decided he wants to leave to get more first team football. I'm fine with this and have jumped ahead and signed his replacement... Zlatan Ibrahimovic! An incredibly short term signing as he's now 39, but his experience will be invaluable and I'm hoping he'll be a good influence on some of my younger players.
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4 hours ago, Fragnat said:
It seems Saka, Martinelli or even ESR didnt get an upgrade at all sadly
Yeah it's a little disappointing to see that. Saka and Martinelli especially were the main positives from last season, so it seems weird that they've not been given a PA bump at least.
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16 minutes ago, SteveUK said:
Think it was just £20.00
Did the Beta drop today?Beta dropped last night. I've so far tried and failed a couple of times to beat my own second XI!
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Haven't properly done this properly for a few years, so thought I'd jump back in and give single player FM a bit of a kick!
After many reloads (I started at 7am this morning!), I'm starting as my local team - Worthing.
#WeAreWorthing
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I've just finished my first season with Norwich and... well... it was incredible!
Season 1 review
EPL - Finished 3rd(!!!!!!!) - I ended up being a point behind winners Man City, who ended up winning the title on GD over Liverpool. There were 2 results in the last 5 games that could have won me the league in hindsight. The first was a 2-2 draw vs Man City at the Etihad - they scored in the 92nd and 93rd minute to equalise. The second was a poor 1-0 los at home to Watford - we dominated but just couldn't put the ball in the back of the net. Even so, we can be VERY proud of how this has gone. We finished top of the possession table with 57%, and were the 3rd highest scorers & 4th best defence. With a better squad I think we'll be just fine!
FA Cup - Can forget about this one. We went out in the third round to Brentford in extra time of the replay. Very disappointing.
Carabao Cup - Lost to Liverpool in the Quarter Final, so nothing to be ashamed of there.
Transfers:
I made some similar transfers to others in this thread, we brought in:
Allan Campbell - Motherwell - £2.1M
Scott McKenna - Aberdeen - 6M
Lewis Ferguson - Aberdeen - £1.3M
Thierry Correia - Valencia - Loan (Cover for FBs)
Wuilker Farinez - Millonarios - £2.2M (January)
Angel Gomes - Man Utd - Loan (January)
Angel Gomes was absolutely incredible. I brought him in to cover for Buendia who had picked up an injury. He ended up playing 14 league games for us, scoring 9 goals and making 2 assists, playing either AML or AMC. Very impressed, and I'm going to see if I can secure his services for next year as well.
Thierry Correia was great too. Again, I initially brought him in as cover but he was superb at both DL and DR, even keeping Lewis out of the team for a little while.
Player stats:
Top goalscorer - Teemu Pukki - 19
Highest Average Rating - Ondrej Duda - 7.31
Most Assists - Emi Buendia - 12
Looking ahead
There's plenty of strengthening needed for next season as we'll be going into the Champions League. I've received an offer in excess of £50M for Cantwell (£42M up front, £10M in 3 12-monthly installments) from Arsenal and I'm not sure whether to let him go or not. I can bring in Vinicius Jr for £20M, but his wages will be much higher than the £20K Todd is currently on.
I don't think I need to strengthen too much in goal, hopefully Farinez will be fine as my first choice next year with Krul as a backup.
Defensively, Aarons & Lewis will be fine for a long time. I may try to bring in Thierry Correia again (maybe permanently) as he can cover both of them. McKenna has impressed me and I will continue to play him with Godfrey, but replacements for Klose and Zimmermann are probably needed.
At CM, Ferguson/Campbell/Trybull are all pretty good but there's definitely room for some quality there, I'll be keeping an eye out for at least one good DLP.
Between AML/AMC/AMR, Buendia and Cantell (if he stays) can probably hold 2 of those 3 down. The departing Duda will leave a big gap, and neither Stiepermann or Hernandez have impressed enough to warrant keeping them around. Huge improvements neeed here.
Striker wise, we again are desperate for reinforcements. Pukki just isn't good enough. He went huge spells of the season not scoring, and his deputy Idah didn't do much better. Idah went 13 games without a goal, before scoring his first goals for the club by netting a hattrick against Aston Villa. He ended the season on 4 goals, so not great. Drmic can leave.
In summary, I think our shopping list is:
1 youth GK (3rd choice)
2-3 CBs (ideally 1 youth)
1-2 CMs
2-3 attacking midfielders (at least 1 youngster)
2 strikers (or 3 with a youth prospect)
I'm not sure how realistic that is with our £45M transfer budget (£56k free wage budget) but I'll see what I can do! I may have to settle for some bargains to try to steer me through the CL group stages.
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Season 1 finished! We ended up winning the PL by 7 points over Man City, and relegated Mustafi's Crystal Palace on the last day of the season! Gouiri couldn't help loan club Newcastle in his few months there, and they ended up going down too. We also won the League Cup (2-0 over Manchester United) but lost 3-2 to the same team in the 5th round of the FA Cup to a 95th minute winner by Mason Greenwood. In the Europa League, we faced Valencia in the final which finished 2-0 to us. Young centre back Scott Kitchen came on in the 2nd half and scored our 2nd goal to secure the win.
Competitions:
Transfers In:
Transfers Out:
It feels a bit strange saying this, but next season we need to improve ourselves offensively. We finished the 2nd highest scorers in the PL with 91, however I'm still a little disappointed. Aubameyang finished the season with 28 goals in 51(6) games - considering he had 272 shots over the course of the season I'd be expecting better. Looking around at other teams, Martial managed 42 goals in less games and with less shots. Those are the kind of numbers I'm hoping for!
I'm also hoping to ship out some more players. As mentioned previously, Ozil is probably going to be on his way out if I can find someone that will take him. Martinez will be leaving on a free as he wanted to triple his wages to stay. Elneny will also be going, as he's agreed a move to Guangzhou. Kolasinac and Mkhitaryan will hopefully be on their way out as well, but I think I've changed my mind on David Luiz. I was initially intending for him to be a backup at best, but he ended up performing really well and replaced Ajer in my starting lineup.
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"Golden Generation" youth intake has now come in! The best youngsters are:
The best name by far has to go to Alexander Hole... How unfortunate
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Ozil has again suffered a major injury, this time a damaged achilles tendon. Suggested time out is about 4 months again, meaning he'll have missed 8 months this season. His time at the club is likely to be up in the summer as I'm expecting his attributes to take a big hit.
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[FM24] The English Football League thread | Rise to the Premiere League
in Good Player & Team Guide
Posted
For anyone starting in the Championship with a bit of money, I'd highly recommend striker Samed Baždar from Partizan.
I managed to pick him up for my Norwich side for £6.25m in January of the first season after losing Rowe for £26m, and he's been absolutely fantastic for me. He only wanted £7k a week for wages as well, which was an absolute bargain.
He took a little while to adapt and managed 9 goals in 14 starts across all competitions in the 2nd half of the season, with an average rating of 7.61 and leading me to promotion. Now that I'm in the prem, he's managed 31 goals in 33 starts in all competitions, with a 7.40 average rating. 28 of those goals have been in the league, and he's now apparently worth up to £57m if the in-game transfer value is to be believed.