warlock

4 pont deduction for breach of financial rules

Thanks, mate. Warlock's Rules of Football Tactics: 1. Find something that works. 2. Understand why it works. 3. Understand what (and why) to change when it doesn't work. Rule 3 is the difficult one and usually takes me half-a-season to figure it out

Working on it

Remarkable... I was just about post a suggestion that you might want to look at ways to boost your GD, given how tight the league is. A few more results like that could be very useful

It will be a while before I manage in England again - after four seasons and 60-odd games a season with Southampton I was mentally exhausted

No manager of the year award? That's an outrage Unless you have a burning desire for another save, I'd probably give it another season to secure Championship status. But congratulations on a job well done

It feels close. Very close. It'll be devastating if we throw it away from here but Real Madrid just won't quit, so we need to be pretty much perfect. Yessir!

Banana But yeah, we all have those days. Need to bounce back, though.

April 2027 - First silverware Still lots to play for midway through the month but I felt this was worthy of its own post: Barcelona might feel hard done by - we edged the possession but they had more and better chances. A combination of great goalkeeping by Hedl and poor finishing by the Barca players cost them. We created two good chances and finished them both. Tactically, I was desperate to find a way to counter their narrow box system and thought playing Allende as a raumdeuter instead of an IF might work, and it did. Logically, there should be a ton of space in their wide-midfield areas but it's always hard to exploit. Thankfully, we managed it this time and picked up our first trophy of the save.

Sierra looks awesome... I'd happily pay his release clause to bring him to Vigo

April 2027 Let's not keep @AlfieLucas on tenterhooks: To put a positive spin on it, honours were shared across the two games... if you overlook the fact the we won on penalties The home leg was a comfortable win for us, although I was always nervous until the second goal went in. Away, Spurs dominated and we were penned in our own final third for much of the game. But they couldn't find an aggregate lead until the first half of extra-time. Luckily, we grabbed a late equaliser when CB Mane headed home a corner and took it to penalties. The shootout looked like it might go on forever until Spurs CB Van de Ven had his attempt saved and we won 8-7. That sets up a daunting semi-final against PSG. On the domestic front we have continued our excellent form (although we got out of jail with three goals in the final 12 minutes against Vallecano): Yet another win against Real Madrid sends us to Copa del Rey final to face Barcelona. And three wins in the league not only maintains our unbeaten season so far but sends us back to the top of the table ahead of Madrid and with a game in hand: A bit of a dry spell for Larsen this month but, fortunately, understudy Guiu continues to do well and has taken his season tally to 8 goals and 3 assists. Dare to dream? Not quite yet, but we're getting close!

That's the alphabet for you Looking good in the league.

As I understand the rules, the cap is based on a rolling 3-year financial performance. Since Valencia was a basket-case for years, and was almost bankrupted by the Covid crisis, it would logically take more than one season of improved finances to shift the salary cap. Also, the cap is recalculated at the end of the season IRL and I imagine FM does the same so I don't think you were ever going to see an uplift ahead of the January transfer window. It's harsh but I think a pretty good reflection of real life.

That's a lot of goals on the opening day.. hopefully you can respond in the appropriate manner

Not quite. Man Utd are probably not a clear example because the debt is so enormous. But here's the budgets in 'original' mode: And here's the budgets in 'your world' mode: Summer transfers haven't/don't happen so there's a bigger transfer budget. But it looks as though the board have snaffled the extra cash. Or to put it a more realistic way, in real life the board backed Ten Hag and put up the money for Mason Mount; in FM they keep most of the money to service the debt. I'd guess that every club is treated differently.

Yes... the transfer doesn't happen so you have the money available to spend as you want.

Nope. As per the in-game description:

February 2027 Transfer window January turned out to be quiet with little of the reported interest in our players amounting to much. No-one bid for Larsen, which was a relief, and the only minor issue was a Liverpool bid for CB Rafa Marin - he wanted to go, I said I'd agree when someone met his £66m release clause, he said that was fair... then immediately put in a transfer request. However, he seems happy enough to wait for the big money bid. I did have a number of backup players I felt had reached the end of the road with Vigo and we managed to move most of them on. Disappointing striker Joveljic joined Al-Wehda for £7.5m, a small profit; AML Luca De La Torre had been declining rapidly and was sold to Leicester for £7.5m; and AMR Miguel Rodriguez was loaned to Vitoria de Guimaraes who are paying £130k a month with an optional £3.8m future fee. Finally, we were forced to sell CB Taylor Harwood-Bellis after he complained about a lack of game time and couldn't be persuaded. He went to Lazio in a deal that should reach £10.75m. With the existing squad depth we had adequate replacements for most of these, but I brought in reinforcements for two positions. At CB I found what I think will be a major upgrade on THB: Mane joins for £11.25m from Dortmund. He needs some development but at 21 he has plenty of time to improve. He's already made 5 first-team appearances and proved himself to be a capable backup to Marin. I was uncertain about a replacement for Rodriguez at AMR but when the scouting team flagged a player who had done extremely well in my Southampton save, I decided to renew our acquaintance: He's not quite the same player in this universe but he's not at all bad, and he's just the kind of small, tricky, elbows-out winger I like - fast, agile, good with the ball and a decent finisher. For just £3.1m from Uruguayan outfit Penarol he was also an absolute bargain, as shown by the immediate uptick in his value. He already has two goals and 6 assists in his short time here. Results The defeat to Barca in the Supercopa was irrelevant, although we did well to push them all the way. But a week later we went one better and beat them in the league. An honourable draw at Old Trafford in the Champions League was another good result but we finished the month with the players pretty much dead on their feet... a narrow defeat to Leverkusen meant we would have to play the Champions League knockout round, and a disappointing draw at lowly Osasuna was a major disappointment after we grabbed the lead after just 3 minutes. If we were struggling at the end of January, we flew through February, racking up some seriously impressive performances - beating arch-rivals Sociedad in the Copa del Rey, home and away victories against Fiorentina in Europe and a remarkable thumping - again! - of Real Madrid. Strand Larsen has been on fire, finding the net four times against Madrid and adding another 5 strikes this month. When he needed resting, youngster Marc Guiu has been an excellent deputy with 4G/3A in 5 starts and 13 sub appearances. Larsen now has 32 goals from 35 appearances in all competitions and his radical improvement is, at least in part, due to a tactical switch. I started experimenting with a 433dm towards the end of last year. The double-pivot in the previous 4231 was excellent defensively but - since I don't have anyone capable of playing a progressive role like a volante - it lacked support in attack. Paradoxically, the 4231 also crowded out Larsen as the front four jammed the opposition area in attack. I hoped the 433 would give us a better balance but I didn't anticipate Larsen's incredible response to the extra space. Since New Year, we've been playing the new system exclusively: It's largely based on the 'control possession' preset with much simplified TIs - shorter passing, work ball, counter-press and a compressed defence with a higher defensive line and a mid-block. I'll usually start on 'balanced' or 'positive' and switch according to the game state. We go into March fighting on multiple fronts. The league is a close two-horse race between us and Real Madrid: Incredibly, we remain the only unbeaten team in the league. March will also see us play Spurs in the Champions League R16 and the second leg of the Copa del Rey semi-final against Madrid.

Original - the way FM has always worked in the past. All transfer business done during the window IRL is in place at the start of the save. Real world - all transfer business happens on the appropriate date during the window in game. Your world - no transfers made during the real-life window are done. You start with a blank slate. The problem with 'original' is that a player who joined your club in September IRL will be in the squad in July. Becomes even more noticeable with the January window - when you started a new save with the winter update, players who joined in January are in the squad the previous July. 'Real world' is arguably more realistic but you need to remember who's joining and leaving up to transfer deadline day. 'Your world' gives you the chance to avoid transfers your club made IRL if you don't agree with the business. Some Man Utd fans, for example, like this because they can swerve the Mason Mount signing and spend the money on players they think are better in terms of squad building. I may be missing some of the finer detail, but I think that covers the broad strokes.

Looking forward to it

Still Ancelotti, still playing the diamond Marco Rose is now at Barcelona, playing the infuriating Brazilian box system. Lots of other managerial changes in this world... Luis Enrique is at Man City, Guardiola now at PSG, Zinedine Zidane at Liverpool, Tuchel at Man Utd, Xabi Alonso went to Inter, Klopp retired at the end of season 1 and hasn't worked since.

Good luck . I have something similar in mind for my next challenge and toppling PSG is a worthy goal.

That's a dramatic increase in workload . My youngest celebrates her 25th birthday next week - don't know where the time went

December 2026 A tricky month but we came through with one major high, and one minor disappointment: We entertained RB Salzburg in the latest round of Champions League fixtures and did well. A goal in each half gave us the victory without too much drama. And the same was true when we returned to LaLiga action with a straightforward win over Valencia. Then came the surprise... away at Real Madrid we not only won but won in style with a dominating performance: AML Rego got us off to a flying start with a goal inside 2 minutes and we were 3-0 up before Madrid got a foothold in the game. But if they harbored hopes of a fightback we quickly snuffed that out with an early goal in the second half as Larsen completed a fantastic hat-trick. From there we restricted their chances and GK Hedl was equal to every opportunity. However, the disappointment soon followed. Sociedad have been our closest rivals to the title of "Best of the Rest" throughout the save and they're hot on our heels again this season. But at home I feel we should have been good enough to claim another victory. We went behind inside 20 minutes but battled back to take the lead with goals either side of the interval. I was confident we could hold on to take the points but they went to an all-out attack late in the second half and we couldn't keep them out. Instead of opening up a gap over Madrid we have to settle for a slender 2pt lead: With the transfer window about to open we have one big cloud on the horizon - major interest in Strand Larsen from Chelsea, and the media reporting that the interest is mutual. The only thing in our favour is - for once! - his minimum fee release clause, which stands at £87m and quite a bit above his quoted value of £65-70m. He won't be leaving for a penny less. Inevitably, there is reported interest in our other leading players - Bayer Leverkusen are looking at RB Mendy; Swedberg is a target for Liverpool, who are also watching first-choice CB Rafa Marin; while the Saudis are circling for LCB Aldarete. We'll see what happens.

Cheers, mate. Hope you had a good time in Scotland I doubt you've been in Scotland so assume you've had real-life issues - the curse of the FM manager