thomas_e

Thanks Winski! A great season and so much fun!

FC Energie Cottbus Season Summary 2030 - 2031 A consecutive top 4 finish and a fantastic CL debut Our first season in the Champions League, meaning that it was the first season when my squad depth was truly put to the test! It was also yet another season that we integrated a couple more youngsters into the first team. Our youngsters keep on improving after being promoted from the U19's and it makes me quite optimistic about the future! I am a little bit worried about a lack of quality at centre back and we dont have anyone in the U19 that will become Bundesliga quality at the moment, so fingers crossed for the next youth intake! We played really good this year, but I had to make quite a few tweaks after the update. The match engine has drastically changed after the update, and even though it's not great at all, it's at least a bit more unpredictable. No more long balls from the GK over a confused defense. The season didn't really include a lot of ups and downs in the league, we played pretty well overall, but the general theme is that we are really good against the weaker teams, but struggle against the top sides. Nothing dramatic about this obviously, but we need to step up our game against the big guns if we want to fight for the Bundesliga title! In the Champions League we performed way better than my expectations. We beat Juventus, Sporting, Lyon, Apoel, Club Brugge and Chelsea, played 0-0 against Villareal and lost to Liverpool in the league phase. This put us in the top 8 and directly qualified to the last 16. Amazing! We met Barcelona in the first round and as expected that was the end of our journey. We lost 5-2 on aggregate, which was fine. We were never going to win and this was a great experience for our young team! I didn't expect us to finish top 4 this season considering that we were playing in the CL for the first time. A really great season overall and hopefully we can improve even more next year! The youth intake was pretty good. We got a good GK which can prove very important. Our star GK, Dittloff, has three years left on his contract and he ain't renewing it! Season Summary Key Players Youth Intake

I think you missed the irony

I just use a screenshot program called Greenshot, then save as image and add it to the post. Double click the image and then you can adjust size.

Of course it's okay @dylan.gangat, and congrats on your promotion ! Looking forward to see how you get on next year, I really enjoyed my Youth Academy Challenge save in Argentina.

I find it strange that this guy refuses to be hired as a fitness coach. He certainly doesn't know his strengths! Look as these crazy stats btw, insane mental attributes.

I hired one just for that reason alone. It's working great and I dont have any release clauses for my players at the moment. Good luck!

There is a way around this, which works most of the time. Have your sporting director initiate negotiations with a player. After one day you can change the contract offer and then the minimum release clause wont be non-negotiable. The only times this doesn't work is when the sporting director feels that the player has really high demands and refuses to negotiate a contract.

FC Energie Cottbus Season Summary 2029 - 2030 A great season with our first top 4 finish! Least season we finished 11th and I wrote that I was a little dissapointed. Yes, it was our first season out of the relegation battle, but I thought 11th place was a little underwhelming. This season we really proved that we have quality in our team when we finished in a fantastic 4th place. The top three spots on the table were way out of reach as Bayern, Dortmund and Leipzig is in another league from the rest of us and my battle was mainly with Stuttgart. Overall I think we played some great football and our young talents are really progressing when given the opportunity to play first team football. This will continue into next season when we will integrate a couple of more players from the U19 side. Playing in the Champions League will be a big tast for our squad, but even though we won't go far in the tournament this will give the team great experience, but also but the squad depth to a test! I honestly think I'm better prepared than many times on this challenge as we have a pretty decent bench. Our youth intake was decent, but the personalities and determination weren't that great. If we underachieved a bit last season we definitely overachieved this year. I dont think we are likely going to finish top 4 next year, but this was still a big milestone for us! Hopefully CL football can convince our best player, Noah Dittloff, to extend his contract. Yes, he has four years left on it, but he wants to play for a better team and I'm worried. There is absolutely zero chance we would have made top 4 this season without him. An absolute superstar already!!! Season Summary Key Players Youth Intake

FC Energie Cottbus Season Summary 2028 - 2029 Mid-table finish and a life time contract for our HOYD? Another good, but slightly boring Bundesliga season and another very promising youth intake, I would say the third intake in a row that really exceeded my expectations. I do think affiliate clubs and youth coaching/recruitment matters more than the HOYD, but I am certainly not replacing him anytime soon. We are getting players through the academy that has the combination of technical talent as well as good determination. The personalities aren't always great, but I value the determination above everything. The only negative is that many players have quite weak physical skills, but we can't have it all. This was our third season in the Bundesliga and before this season we have finished 14th and 12th. We improved on those results and ended up 11th. The reason I say it was a bit boring is because this was the first year we were not involved in the relegation battle and I honestly think we should have ended the season on the top half of the table. At Christmas we were 8th and we were playing really well at times. Unfortunately we couldn't keep it up and we were terrible in the second half of the season. But we have a young team and it only makes sense that the performances will be unstable. We got a few injuries that set us back a bit and I loaned out a player (the first real loan I have gotten so far, the loan system on FM23 is so bad I dont know what to say) so that he could play every game for a first team instead of being a rotational option for us and doing that we lost a pretty big impact player from the bench. I also replaced my starting striker for a big talent from the U19 and that was more a long term decision than a short term one. But those are the decisions you have to do! I hope next season we won't be dragged back into the relegation battle, but rather can fight for a decent spot on the top half of the table. I will probably also replace Tobias Eisenhuth, a club icon defensive midfielder that has been with me from the start of the save with a very gifted player from the U19, hopefully he can improve a lot next season and bring another dimension into the team. Noah Dittloff, our wonderkid goalkeeper, keeps improving and I can only prey that I can keep him. He will be a true superstar! The same goes for Richie Thompson, he is developing at an extremely rapid pace. A defender that also has fantastic offensive qualities, so much so that the coaching staff considers him my best striker as well. Maybe that says more about my strikers? Season Summary Key Players Youth Intake

In my 6th season, two promotions and great progress, you would think the board should be positive towards improvements. I think I've asked the board 25 times if we can get an affiliate club to loan out players to. 25 enquiries, 25 times I have been declined. Consider that also loans are pretty much bugged this is very, very poor. Playing this challenge is as fun as ever, but this FM version really has some odd flaws..

Agree, but to lose 10 determination points all of a sudden was more than I've seen before!

Wow, never seen that one before. Has anyone else experienced this? Do you have any idea how this could have happened? A terrible mentoring group perhaps?

Energie Cottbus Season summary 2027 - 2028 Another Bundesliga survival and yet another great youth intake Our second season in the Bundesliga and as expected it was another year battling against relegation. We started the season really well, but we also faced several relegation competitors at home in the beginning of the season so it was really crucial wins! After the good start we started to struggle a bit, but no more than expected and overall I think we played better than last year. The big difference from last season was that the teams around us were more even in their performances and compared to the 12 points last season we finished just 5 points above direct relegation even though we finished with more points. A big highlight this year was a 1-0 home win against Bayern Munchen, a victory that occured when we were in terrible form which made it even better. Halfway through the season we promoted our best youngster, goalkeeper Noah Dittloff to the first team and he really delivered. A class player already at 16, let's hope we can keep him! We had another really good youth intake, the last years have been a blessing. The only negative is that we are getting many central midfielders and even though many of them have good defensive skills they are quite short, so we are having some trouble regarding the future of our CB positions. Our best U19 strikers also haven't progressed as well as I'd hoped so that is a bit of a worry, but overall I certainly can't complain!! Next season will also be about survival, but I hope we can survive a bit more comfortable! Season Summary Key Players Youth Intake

Yes, they are absolutely brilliant. The intake preview was great, but you never know what you're going to get, so I was absolutely ecstatic when I was the intake in March. We also got several other promising players. Not great stats, but great personalities! Really gives me great hope for the future!

Energie Cottbus Season Summary 2026 - 2027 A great Bundesliga survival and very promosing youngsters! Our first season in the Bundesliga and it was always going to be a fight to survive. Several of the players in the starting eleven were with the team from the start of the save and even though they have developed really well we are extremely weak in several positions. Out of 18 teams we finished in a very impressive 14th place. We struggled massively in many games, but we actually won the season opener and never at one point throughout the season did we sit in a relegation spot. After winning the first game our victories came very rarely, but we did manage to win three games in a row before christmas and that run of games (including two draws after this) were really important! We also had quite a few easy games at the end of the season so with 7-8 games left I was quite comfortable in our chances. Not that we ended up winning most of those games anyway, but we got some points here and there. Hamburger SV and 1860 Munchen had shocking seasons, 1860 only won two games all year, so it was good for us that two teams fell so far behind early on. I really hope that will be the case next year as well, as we are certainly not in any position to be climbing on the table. Next season will be really tough and avoiding relegation is all that matters! I have probably played closer to 100 seasons on this challenge. This was definitely one of the toughest yet and I'm proud of keeping this team up. Mid-March I promoted two defenders from the U19 side and put them straight into the first team. Throwing out a couple of old bad players, and trusting the next generation of quality players!! I have a great U19 side at the moment, as strong as I can remember having at this challenge, and I need to integrate more and more of those players as soon as possible. We had another great intake and Noah Dittloff (GK) looks like a potential superstar. He already has a minimum release clause in his first contract, so that is a big worry, this is a player that the big guns will be chasing! In classic Football Manager-logic we are now moving out of our 22 000 seat stadium that is always sold out to a new 17 000 seat stadium. Great work SI! Goal for next season: Survive and keep bringing in youth players to the starting eleven. Season Summary Key Players Youth Intake

Always annoying to miss a player on a minimum release clause. In the future, to try avoiding it, you can set a price tag for the player that is just below the release clause. The AI will usually not make any bids above your asking price. They do sometimes, but it isually works.

Impressive work @fries!

Yes. It works, but it doesn't work well. They very often arrange the matches at strange times, like the day before a first team game.

I manually set up the friendlies for my U19 side. They already play in a league, but I need the friendlies to keep my first team reserve's match fit. I just arrange them on the same day every week and I do 15 games at a time when I set it up which makes it a pretty fast task to do.

Yes, a lot of work, but thanks for the tip, I might start critizing players a bit more even when they are performing above my usual 6,0 criteria!

Of course it's okay Looking forward to following your journey with KSC Lokeren. Always great to start off the challenge with a promotion

Based on the posts in this thread, all journeys are a joy to follow btw, it seems like the challenge is tougher this year. Re-signing players are much more difficult than previous versions with non-negotiable release clauses much more frequent and players deciding early that they want to leave on free transfer.

Thanks buddy!

Thanks, really happy (and scared) about the progression so far. If I can make the playoff spot (16th out of 18 teams) I will be extremely happy. The good thing is that Darmstadt and 1860 Munchen got promoted alongside me instead of Schalke and Union Berlin, I think they will struggle as well, so it's basically a battle between us and them. The supporters have moderate say on my position. They are keeping in mind the results from last year and strongly want me to be competitive against Hertha Berlin so those will be big games for us!!