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Generally there are players there who will provide solid squad depth but not much in the way of title winning quality. VIllalibre can be very good, along with Kepa. Outside of that you're looking at players like Oscar Gil who are solid players but not really classy. It can be near impossible to get players from Sociedad, it takes a lot of time but it does get a touch easier as club reputation gap increases

Hey guys, I wanted to raise a point of concern for FM18 with the massive increase in transfer fees we've seen in the real world this summer, as I've no doubt you will look to incorporate this into FM18. My issue is a fairly specific one which could be game breaking for anyone who wants (like myself) to manage Athletic Club in Spain (but also to a lesser extent has an effect on all Spanish clubs). With such a dramatic increase in transfer fees, buy out clauses for many players in Spain are now much more realistic figures than they used to be. Ok, no major drama, that's real life and it should be a part of the game. If someone offers the release clause you could offer a new contract yourself in an attempt to keep the player at the club, but if the other club has a much better rep than yourself it's a completely lost cause sometimes. In recent versions of the game, certain players at Athletic are very much sought after early on. I'm usually fending off interest in Aymeric Laporte, Mikel San Jose, Inaki Williams, Oscar De Marcos, Iker Muniain etc in the first season/initial summer window. I am very concerned that with bigger budgets/transfer fees floating around most of the Athletic first XI could be taken within the first season with the human player having no chance to stop it, and of course Athletic simply can't sign replacements like other Spanish clubs could to at least soften the blow and make it less of an issue. Inaki Williams has made it clear he has no desire to leave, as has Laporte (the latter more from an 'at this stage of my career' point of view), but none the less with the post Neymar merry-go-round over the next 10 days, it's completely possible someone like Williams could have a change of heart. I'll be honest from being a fan of the club, it seems unlikely but not impossible. Player loyalty is a huge thing at Athletic Club, let's take Oscar De Marcos as an example. He's said numerous times in recent seasons he will never leave Athletic, and that was when Chelsea were coming in for him with big money last summer. In FM18 I am concerned that they will just hit the release clause and with Athletic not being able to compete with the wages they would offer within the first season or two of the game, he would be gone. If this happens to one player, it's really bad for Athletic, but you can move on (it's happened before and will happen again e.g. Javi Martinez)... if it happens to 4 or 5 players in quick succession who can't be replaced it makes the save almost impossible and the human player couldn't break the bank with multiple players offering massive new contracts to try and stem the tide without risking financial consequences for the club. If they all were sold and you tried to just power on with academy players, the board wouldn't adjust the expectations for the next season and you'd have a huge transfer budget you couldn't spend on anyone, it's likely expectations couldn't be met and could result in the sack before you can build things back up. On FM17, if one of the big clubs in Europe comes after De Marcos for example, he becomes immediately unhappy and wants to leave, same with Laporte, San Jose, Williams, Laporte etc, which means I can't even offer a contract to compete with a bidding club if they were to activate his release clause. Technically it's not a feature request but I couldn't find a suitable place on the forum to post this to bring this up. I suppose as a feature request it would be some sort of improved loyalty model or greater opportunities to discuss transfers with the player to convince them not to go, with the player having less emphasis on money/club rep if they are a fan of the club. As I said at the top of the post, my issue is obviously not with release clauses and the massive increase in transfer fees, that's life, but it's more in relation to how player loyalty is handled in the game as this could be a huge problem for Athletic Club as a viable save in FM18. This has the potential to be a game breaking issue in the worst case scenario, hopefully you guys can take a look at it! Thanks

I made a topic in the feature requests forum in regards to release clauses, huge money transfers in FM18 and player loyalty as I feel this could be a huge problem for an Athletic save. Feel free to check it out and share your opinion on the thread if you feel you should: Real life reflection here: Yeray was doing some running on the pitch at San Mames with Javier Clemente after the game against Getafe. He's still going through chemotherapy following his 2nd bout of struggle with testicular cancer, but seems to be doing well and is set to return to full training mid September hopefully. Get well soon Yeray

I play in the same way. I don't think FM does a great job of incorporating Athletic's transfer policy, but at least you can choose to do it this way if you want. If you support/follow the club, it's a massive part of the clubs identity and it's important for me to play it true to life.

Come and hang out in the Athletic Club thread in the good players/teams forum

Yeah I've been very fortunate to get strong fullback newgens on each side! He does indeed! Still room to grow as well, so he's going to be our best player for many years I would imagine.

2020/21 Season Update: A great season in La Liga, smashing the 100 point mark for the first time. I'm surprised we've won the league 3 years running now with the squad we have, but the tactics are just working and Real/Barca are underperforming. In other La Liga news, Villarreal after a superb 2019/20 had a shocker in 20/21 just avoiding relegation. Atletico are looking very strong these days and made the incredible free signing of James Rodriguez at the start of the season. Combined with their new stadium I can see them pushing hard in coming seasons. We had a slightly dissapointing Champions League campaign after getting through a tough group in 1st place. It left us with a first knockout round game against Juventus (including Dybala). We were the better team in both legs but didn't take our chances and lost 3-2 on aggregate. We lost the first leg 2-1 in Turin, and then were leading 1-0 at San Mames before a 70th minute goal made it 1-1 and gave them the crucial away goal. We hit the post twice in the closing stages but couldn't take it to extra time...very disappointing! This season saw a departure from our slightly cautious 4-1-2-3 wide (e.g. 4-5-1, 4-3-3 or whatever you want to call it), to a more attacking, 4-4-1-1. Some elements remained the same in terms of our philosophy, for example we are still a high pressing team, but with a slightly more attacking structure we do this with a full team press, higher up the pitch. I've always been a fan of a full team press 4-4-2 type system, but I tend to only go to it once I have the quality and personal to make it work. We're an extremely hard working team, so the purchase of Mikel Oyarzabal and his ability to play the attacking midfielder role so well, I felt this was the opportunity to make the change...it worked well! We also kept the 4-1-2-3 set up to use when we need someone playing in the DM position, and we also have a high press 3-1-4-1-1 formation which we use occasionally against dangerous 2 striker formations: Transfers/Youngsters: This season saw the acquisition of Mikel Oyarazabal who I'd been pursuing for a number of years. He has years ahead of him and offers some real quality in the AMC role, while he can also play wide or in central midfield as needed. This season also saw the departure of a number of older faces, with Benat and Ander Iturraspe leaving before the season started...both were still doing ok but with some good young lads coming through I wanted to give them the match time. At the end of the season we also sold on Oscar De Marcos (I never like to sell him!) and Javi Martinez. Oscar was getting on and we have good depth so I couldn't warrant keeping his wages on the books. Javi Martinez had a strong season but at 33 with injury problems and a high wage he was a candidate to shift out, as he wasn't offering much beyond squad depth, and with the tactical change he wasn't quite as useful (not quick enough to play our high line defence in the CB role, and not mobile enough to play as a central midfielder in our 4-4-1-1. I offered him out to clubs in April right after we won the league, and he signed a deal with Liverpool. Two weeks late he tears his cruciate ligament again Have fun with those wages Liverpool!! A number of our youngsters continued to impress this season, with a few out on loan making good progress, some at the B team in the Segunda and a few making plenty of first team appearances. I won't post screenshots of too many, just a few special ones so you can see their development from previous pictures: Xabier Intxausti broke into our first team squad at barely 16. This screenshot is Dec of the next season and he's featuring regularly now, could be world class! Did somebody say world class?? Well Ander Bilbao is well on his way to achieving that at 20 years old.

Yeah fair enough, it's a smart way to increase the talent pool! I won't show my transfers but I make on average 5-6 incoming transfers each season total. The only reason being that I don't sign under 16 spaniards unless they have Basque nationality already, so I can only pick from Real Sociedad, Osasuna, Alaves etc academy products plus the odd randoms who pop up at other clubs. Instead I focus on bringing through my own academy players and seeing how far I can push them, and I supplement them with the best players I can get hold of from the other Basque academies as and when they're willing to sell/willing to join, which can be tricky (especially with Real)

Holy mother of god that's a lot of transfers :O

And then on his debut

Unbelievable, took me 3 years of making him my top target, declaring interest, scouting his games, I even recently started watching his games myself. Finally I get him on deadline day. Also this is a new one...

If there's one thing to say about Tony Pulis, it's that he can get a team to play the way he wants and do it effectively. He may not be the most expansive or exciting manager, but you know you're going to get a solid team from him.

Does this have a potential affect on the player you are trying to unsettle?

Obviously within reason, but it's more important to have roles that fit within the overall system rather than aiming for 10 bars on role suitability for each player. Having two complete forwards could potentially work just fine though. If there is another combination of forward roles you feel would be better for the team overall, your strikers will no doubt do them just fine. To put it into perspective, I had a young striker who was an advanced forward...he had 3 or 4 bars in role suitability as a complete forward, which is the role I want in my system. After training/match experience he improved his role suitability, but for quite a while he only had that 3-4 bar suitability and he performed just fine

Not too many people wanting to emulate Tony Pulis! If he holding you hostage make a deliberate typo in your next post and we can alert the authorities