warlock

You're not contributing much, are you? There's nothing to suggest the match engine was changed in the update, so there's no reason to suppose the update nerfed your set-pieces. How many set-pieces have you had since the update to conclude they don't work? And in general, links to external websites are not allowed under forum rules.

No. You can join the argument here:

No spoilers but Inzaghi was sacked after the match. A few days later, this arrived in my inbox: Thanks, but no thanks.

Sinners & Saints October 2026 After a good start to the season I was looking for us to build a strong run of form. While we're not tearing the league apart, we are piecing together a series of results that leave us well-placed going into the brutal winter months: September saw us progress in the Carabao Cup, record a win and a draw in the Europa League, and secure 5 points from 9 in the Premier League. The match against Reims aside, we were less than convincing in most games but 6 games without defeat is not to be sneezed at. Arsenal, home or away, is always a tough challenge and I fully expected us to lose this one. But we escaped with a fortuitous draw after Odegaard gave the visitors an early lead, thanks to an own-goal from Saliba. I'd identified Everton as another hard game this month as they were among the early front-runners, and again we rode our luck to take a share of the points. A Calvert-Lewin hat-trick gave the Toffees the lead until 3 miutes from time when Abraham grabbed his second of the game to claim the draw. In October we found another gear: Against stronger opponents I'm using our usual strategy of lower lines and a strong counter, and it's working well. When City came to St Mary's we completely FM'd them: Away at Newcastle, once again they had the possession, the shots and the xG - but we had the goals: And against Spurs it was a similar story. If any of our forwards could have hit the target we'd have nicked this one as well but the point gained was very welcome. This season's Sinners and Saints so far... Saints include new boys Omobamidele, Pirola and Carnesecchi who have helped us to the third-best defence in the league. In midfield, Valentin Carboni has also made a good start to his Southampton career, and up front Fer Nino has helped cover for a slow start by Abraham with 3 goals and an assist in 4(3) appearances. But wearing the shiniest halo is youngster Nyheim - 6 goals and 3 assists in his first 11 appearances (3 off the bench) make him not just our top scorer but also our most important player. Sinners - and there are more than a few - include Adam Armstrong, the player of the save until this season but his form has collapsed, recording a 6.6 rating in his last 5 starts. DM Ludovit Reis seems to have had his head turned by rumours of Saudi interest and is below average when he plays, and AMC Gonzalez, who should be battling Nyheim for the starter's spot, seems to have given up. But the most annoying sinner is Roony Bardghji... he has two goals from 5(4) appearances, which is okay, but he only bothers in the second half after I've torn him a new one in the interval team talk. Otherwise he just drifts through games, misplacing passes, not making forward runs or tracking back. He has the lowest average rating of the entire squad. But there's this: With a quarter of the season gone we have the slightest grasp on top spot, although Arsenal have that game in hand. November will be interesting: we'll face Man Utd and Liverpool - the latter, now managed by Simone Inzaghi, sit in 14th place - and we end the month against Brentford, who are one place above Liverpool. A chance for more points?

Perhaps people can stop starting fires?

Sinners & Saints August 2026 pt2 With the transfer window closed, let's take a look at our early form. The board expectations are that we record a top-half finish, and reach the quarter-final of the Europa League, while playing "attractive", "high tempo", "possessive" and "defensively solid" football . The squad for the first half of our campaign shapes up like this: Team performances have been pretty good to start the season, with the obvious exception of our opening game against Bournemouth: New signings Nyheim and Nino have settled in quickly, but some players have been well below the required standard - Abraham has started all four games but has no goals, no assists and an average rating of 6.45; Roony has 1 start and 3 sub appearances but no goal contributions and an average rating of 6.5. Patrick Berg and Ludovit Reis have been bang average and, together with Shea Charles, are not doing enough to guarantee automatic selection, but all three are "concerned" by their lack of appearances. On early results it's looking like another tight competition - after four games only leaders West Ham have an unbeaten start (3 wins and 1 draw). September will give us a better idea of where we stand as we face better opposition in Arsenal and Everton, and kick-off our Europa League campaign.

I was kinda hoping Brentford might go down for that reason but was pleased they survived (they're my local team ). Otherwise there wasn't much available in the positions we needed targets for.

Sinners & Saints August 2026 So... another transfer window closed, another season underway, and quite a lot to talk about. In terms of outgoings a couple were already confirmed before the end of last season as LB Ryan Manning made his move to Burnley permanent for £11.5m, and striker Paul Onuachu joined Norwich for £12m. I though CB Bella-Kotchap would not return to the club but it turned out he had another 12 months on his current deal, but he was quickly moved on to Marseille for £24m. Then the sharks began circling. Our star GK Restes had been linked with a move to Saudi Arabia but no offers were received but completely out of the blue Spurs triggered his release clause and he was gone for £32.5m. I had made several offers of a new contract to try and get that clause removed or raised but he refused all offers of talks. Much sadness. Another unexpected offer whisked away another of our top prospects as Lazio snapped up backup RB Mattia Zanotti for a shade under £20m, quickly followed by a release clause bid for star RB Elias Jelert. I made a panicked offer of a new contract and, happily, he accepted but at the cost of breaking our wage structure. He becomes our highest earner by far on £86k a week (but with no release clause). Finally, late in the window, Everton and Nice came in for CB Christoph Klarer. We moved quickly to sign a replacement before agreeing a deal and he choose the south of France and left for £19.75m With a bunch of youngsters and no-longer-wanted seniors leaving on loan, our transfer income for the window was £102m. Transfers in began before the end of last season. There were constant rumours and media stories about Saudi interest in CB Alessandro Buongiorno so I moved for a new left-footed defender: Pirola joins us from Salernitana for a fee that may reach £17.5m. A good all-round defender, he should be a reliable option at LCB. Our top priority was a replacement for Restes between the sticks. We have Seimen as backup and he should be the long-term solution, but he's not quite ready for prime time yet. Equally, I didn't want to spend a fortune bringing in a newcomer. I think we found the right balance in Marco Carnesecchi: Not the quickest or the best distributor of the ball, but he should do a good job for us until Seimen is ready to take over. As he cost us just £6.5m from Atalanta, he has good sell-on potential if he doesn't want to stay as long-term backup. To replace Zanotti as backup RB we returned to Italy and found a very similar player: Missori cost us £6m from Sassuolo and has already shown himself capable of doing the job. To replace Klarer at RCB we were short on time and short on options. I eventually decided to splurge big money on a long-term target: Very quick for a big man, Omobamidele has all the right attributes and I'm sure will quickly prove to be worth the £38m we paid Forest for his services. Having covered all the urgent gaps in the squad, I could turn attention to the reinforcements that had been identified last year. The first of these was a better backup to Gonzalez at AMC. One player stood out among the scouting recommendations: Nyheim was a genuine bargain at just £5m from Molde. His attributes look great, he has a resolute personality, and I love the confidence of a 20-year-old who argues with officials. He came in and made an immediate impact with 2 goals and 2 assists in his first four starts, and already looks to have made that AMC spot his own. Having wanted more reliable cover for Abraham up front, I wondered if we could find a decent striker who wouldn't endlessly complain about playing time. I think we found a solution: Nino hasn't developed as well as was expected at the start of his career but he was happy to be rescued from the Spanish L2 and I'm confident he'll be an able backup while young prospect Jovan Milosevic continues his development. His wages are rather more than I wanted to pay, but the £5.25m we paid to Albacete made him a very affordable option. Finally, I noted that we had problems with AMR Roony Bardghji last season but I was prepared to give him the chance to prove himself. But with money burning a hole in our transfer budget I decided to make a move and bring in another option: Carboni joins us from Napoli for £7.75m and I hope the competition with Roony will push both of them to greater heights. If they both excel, so much the better as we look to find a long-term replacement to Adam Armstrong, who turns 30 in the new year. Despite my best efforts, we haven't made much of a dent in that transfer budget. We spent around £80m but still ended up with a huge budget of £108m. I'm happy to have turned Southampton into an English version of Benfica, finding and developing young prospects who can be sold on for massive profits, but I'm also aware that at some point we'll have to keep our best players if we're to achieve the kind of success everyone at St Mary's wants. For now, I'm optimistic about our prospects in this coming season.

Not really like-for-like but I reckon this kid will be a superstar midfielder: Two u21 caps for Slovenia already. Been a difficult transfer window with about 10 days to go - about half the first-team squad are wanted by Saudi clubs or top European teams, and we've already lost a couple of players to activated release clauses. But we're still not reputable enough to bring in big transfer targets. Money isn't the problem - started the window with a £66m war chest and it's now up to £134m . Poor scouting is the real problem; in the first two seasons I was getting nothing but recommendations for actual and potential Championship players. This window it's all 5* potential 18-year-olds who would be great in the long term but are currently rated Tier 4 or 5 level. We already have plenty of those in the youth squads. Onwards and upwards, eh?

As I understand it, Porto B is not "your" team - they're an affiliate club run separately. Once you allocate players to Porto B you can't move them to your own youth team. You can move them back to the main Porto squad (but you might not be able to do that within the same season - it's like that in Spain for sure).

Bonuses? Clean sheets, goals, assists... they can add up to quite a lot, but they're not part of the committed salary spend. The club does have to allow for the cost, so some estimate of payments is included, I believe.

One from the heart, eh? Wish you the best of luck with this. In truth, that squad looks better than I expected, although injuries are an obvious issue. May be a bit light in central midfield but good options elsewhere. Hope you can right those wrongs

And no sooner had I posted the above then this arrived in my inbox: I think it's because Man City had a Europa League place for winning the Carabao Cup but then qualified for the Champions League by finishing second in the PL.

Sinners & Saints End of season, 2026 By the end of March I felt the need for more tactical tinkering. Our league form had been terrible but one specific problem had emerged - the poor form of Roony Barghji at AMR. Perhaps we'd pushed him too far too soon (he's still only 20 years old) but from late February he was a passenger in the side, only managing one goal and two assists in the three games we played against Championship opposition and a rock bottom West Brom. Against PL opponents he had a rolling average rating of 6.4. That meant I had little option but to move Adam Armstrong back out there instead of up front. That in turn left us shorthanded for strikers, so it made sense to drop the second striker down to AMC, where we - just - had the personnel to cover. During our bad run I'd been constantly tweaking TIs to little effect. Finally, I decided to simplify everything and dropped all of the in-possession instructions. It worked, spectacularly: The Wolves game was the first to employ the new 4231 and performed okay against a side battling against relegation. After that our formed improved dramatically and we certainly got the best out of Armstrong. Our best performance of the run came against a Newcastle team pushing hard for Champions League qualification: Armstrong gave us the lead after just 3 minutes, en route to a brilliant hat-trick, but the whole team were fantastic. And we carried that form into May: After the Leeds win we had climbed to 3rd in the table with an outside shot at the title but then, unfortunately, we ground to a halt. Against West Ham we were without both Armstrong (exhausted) and Abraham (injured), as well as Gonzalez, our best AMC who would miss the remainder of the season with a muscle tear. The FA Cup final was always going to be tough, made tougher by the continued absence of Abraham and a bad day at the office for our back line. Finally, against Forest we played as though the whole team had checked out for the summer. But we had done enough to qualify for Europe again, sneaking in to the Conference League and overperforming our pre-season expectations of just a top-half finish: And some outstanding individual performances: A shoutout to Tammy Abraham who added 28 goals to Armstrong's tally. Generally, we're looking good for next season: The key requirements are a new CB to replace Bella-Kotchap who has refused offers of a new contract and will depart imminently, and a backup for Gonzalez at AMC. I'm prepared to hold fire on Barghji's position in the hope that he can develop in line with his potential. I'm also hoping for improvements at AML from Mitrovic and Edozie. Our other important business will be to fend off Saudi interest in Abraham, and to keep hold of Restes.

Ouch! That's a dramatic loss of form. But you're right about the winter break - those bad runs are hard to stop otherwise.

I posted earlier about Villa struggling in the same way last season - reached the latter stages of the Europa League but were relegated from the PL. It was something I was worried about, but we just about managed the extra workload. In the end, Brentford escaped the drop on the final day, but lost the Europa League final (which also means that we were knocked out by the eventual winners... a slight consolation).

Weird situation at the end of season. Brentford are mired in the relegation battle: While also involved in a European final: So they could go down to the Championship as Europa League champions

Wondered if you might be pushed into saving them, virtually speaking

Don't think that Reading avatar has escaped notice... something you'd like to say?

Hey buddy, thanks for dropping by. There have been some ups and downs but broadly the trend is up so I've got to be pleased.

Quite the turnaround from our tiff last month:

Sinners & Saints March 2026 A bad month by any measure, although performances were not as bad as the results suggest: Against United we pretty much matched them blow for blow, but Rashford grabbed a goal after half-an-hour and we just couldn't find an equaliser. Over two legs, the tie against Lazio could not have been closer. In Rome they took a 2-0 lead into the interval but we came storming back and led 2-3 after 75 minutes and were looking good for the win, before they got one of those magic penalties in the 94th minute to get the draw. At home we took the lead in the first half but couldn't extend it. Lazio created little until, in the final minute, they somehow scrambled an equaliser. So the game went into extra time and we had nothing left to give. With 5 minutes left on the clock, Lazio found the winner and we were out of the competition. However, worse was to come. The next day I was confronted with a small-scale squad rebellion, with half a dozen players led by Abraham "outraged" that I had failed our season goal of reaching the Europa League quarter-final. When I mildly pointed out that it wasn't entirely my fault, I managed to win over about half the group but Tammy was having none of it. I'm the manager, I'm responsible. We were not a happy camp when Arsenal turned up for the last game of the month, but the football gods had decided we were due a little late luck. The two teams largely cancelled each other out before Jesus gave the visitors the lead after 84 minutes but, with virtually the last kick of the game, Gonzalez found the net after Arsenal failed to clear a corner. The bright spot is our FA Cup quarter-final win. We face Crystal Palace in the semis, but with Spurs and Chelsea in the other tie, I'm not confident of our ability to retain the trophy. Which is a shame because it might be our best chance of getting back into European competition next year. Our league position is precarious: We have a game in hand but we're much closer to Arsenal and Chelsea below than to Liverpool and Newcastle above. Of the top sides, we only have Newcastle left to play and most of our run-in is against teams in the bottom six. But as we've seen so often, those clubs battling for survival are often the toughest opponents. I'm hopeful, but not confident.

A good season so far. Frustrating that you can't seem to open up a gap at the top of the table. Just keep plugging away, I guess

Sinners & Saints February 2026 This was the month where the grind eventually caught up with us. The schedule of two games almost every week through the winter months meant we were unable to play anything like a settled side through injuries and the need for constant rotation. We still pulled off some remarkable results but we couldn't keep it up: We were fantastic against one of our bogey teams in Chelsea - a goal from Mitrovic just before halftime seemed to break them. We scored another two early in the second half and then ran riot towards the end. The FA Cup tie against Arsenal was one of those incredible games FM throws up every now and again: Literally end to end stuff. We eventually stretched out a lead before halftime but Arsenal came back strongly, then they conceded a penalty, and late on young CB Callum Doyle tried to block a shot and only managed to deflect it into our net. So it was back to our place for the replay where we managed to bag another four goals but, thankfully, held them to a brace. Then came the wobble. The match away at Man City was a game too far and we looked exhausted before the kickoff. A 1-2 defeat could have been much worse and we left with our pride intact. But we had nothing in the tank for the visit of league leaders Spurs. I hoped a week off before our visit to struggling West Brom would allow us to recharge, and we looked good after taking the lead inside 30 minutes. But we could produce nothing else and allowed the Baggies a late equaliser. Who knows what happened against Villa in the FA Cup? Yes, I asked for an end to the poor form; yes, they're a Championship side now, but the lads went out like a pack of ravening wolves and ripped them to shreds. I don't think the fact that Villa are now managed by David Moyes can explain it, but it was certainly a morale booster for us. In comparison, the game against Fulham was a routine victory we were heavy favourites to win. The two defeats this month, together with the two in January, have had a dramatic impact on our league position. From second place and a good chance to reclaim top spot, we're now hanging on to 6th by our fingernails: March opens with a trip to Old Trafford and ends with yet another game against Arsenal. In between we have the knockout round in the Europa League... with plenty of lesser clubs still in the competition we have been unlucky to draw Lazio. Beware the sides of March, eh?