TheNayr

Annoyingly if you crash out of the Asian Champions League in the qualifying rounds you don't go into the Confederation Cup. Fortunately I'm not annoyed about that for us as of course we beat the Saudi team Al-Ittihad away because we're amazing. Not so good though, Bengaluru lost their match so there won't be 3 Indian teams in the Group Stage this year, hopefully next year though. But yeah, now Bengaluru won't have any continental competition going forward which is a really ****** way of doing things. I don't know what to make of it, last year I thought we were going to struggle but ended up winning the group? Who knows. If I had to guess, we'll finish 2nd behind Al-Sadd and hopefully do enough to get into the next round. I promised new signings and that's what I've done. 3 foreign players and 2 Indian, we'll start with the Indians. Arjun Singh He's an experienced international for us and well look at that. A natural across the entire backline which is perfect, I love the versatility and he's a good player too. Will be important for us in every game and I'm surprised Jamshedpur let him go, but much like the person underneath, he probably didn't want to sign a new contract. Next up, he's my captain for India, he's captain for me now at Goa. It's the one and only Anirudh Saini. The 5'4 DM who started this journey with me as a regenerated player at Bengaluru when I first loaded the game, they released him on a free so I snapped him up immediately, I needed and wanted him here. The tiny aggressive man with solid mentals and physicals is here. Arjun and Anirudh were signed at the end of year, I had no idea they were becoming available! Now let's move onto the 3 new foreign imports to help us. Starting with Loti Celina who can naturally play LB and RB along with wing back on both sides of the pitch. We do have a tactic with WB's so he's useful for that too. He's a solid all round guy who will play a lot of games this year. Another full back is coming up, infact he was the first guy we approached. All of last year our starting RB was a 17 year old 1 star guy haha, so it wouldn't be hard to get better and that's what we've done with Iranian Amin Pilali. He's not amazing in any way, but he's a vast step up from what we had. He's good without being incredible but we'll look to do better than him next year. Due to signing Singh the Iranian might not see much time at all tbh, but a good backup. The last guy is Irish Brandon Ly I thought he was going to be better, but he's turned out solid enough. A natural RB, DM and CM makes him very valuable to me whilst also being competent at RWB and AMR. He will see a lot of game time this year and I'm happy to have him. Being young makes him have possible sell on value too. We have improved both for starters and backup, so I'm suspecting being league Champions again and hopefully we go well in the Champions League. This could be my last year at Goa, getting the youth coaching and recruiting up to max level will be a goal I'll try and get every Indian team to have in the top league and worry about training facilities when I can. This will also be my last post for a while as I'm going on holiday today. Until next time.

It is an ABSOLUTE MIRACLE that I'm still the Indian manager, I thought this journey was over. Let's have a look at the state of this shall we?! Pathetic. We were outclassed in basically every game. It was very painful to watch and I hated every second of it. We scored 1 goal in them 10 games. I should've been fired. I honestly thought there was a chance to upset the odds and at least get into the playoffs, not a bloody chance. Anyway, still manager of India. Next time we'll be older and better, next time we can maybe push for the playoffs. Onto some better news at club level at least... We are the champions of India for the first time which is great! We performed much better in the league this year and finished off strong in the playoffs. We beat Bengaluru home and away in the playoff semis before defeating Kerala in the final. Without any human help Kerala have developed really nicely as an AI club and keep going strong. Next season 2nd would've been good enough to secure Champions League group stage action, however finishing 2nd this year means we have to go through a playoff (Due to a poor year lowering our co-efficient and losing 2 automatic group stage places) to get into the group stage against Al-Ittihad from Jeddah, I'm a little worried. If we lose this 1 legged tie for which we're away for, there's NO continental football this year which would be a disaster for our finances. The season we've just played though, this is how our Champions League campaign turned out. After a very nice win at home to Al-Gharafa the away leg was very tough, however a hat-trick from our Jordanian superstar made sure the goals from us were able to keep them just far enough away to secure passage to the next round, but as you can see, we were blown away. Dominated home and away by Al-Faisaly. Their squad fueled by oil money was far too much for us to overcome and proved I need to strengthen the team, especially at the back which is what I've done. 3 new foreign players have already agreed pre-contract agreements and all 3 are defenders which was our weakest point. Youth intake day was quite disappointing. Whilst it looks like it may have been pretty decent, I assure you it really wasn't haha. Whilst I signed a few from it, the only person of real note showing you is Rajib Singh. Just a solid looking AMC with decent technicals, goodish mentals and alright physicals. He won't be super good as our below average training facilities will hold him back a bit, but we can get some improvement from him over the next couple of years. I'm hoping next year's intake should be amazing though due to this. We now have the highest possible for both much like Bengaluru so maybe can start actually getting through some great players here at Goa. I had to fight the chairman for both, including the youth coaching I actually tried and worked threatening to resign and IT ACTUALLY WORKED! Until next time.

I've just gotten the youth intake preview so I thought it was a good time to pop in and show you how the season is going and more importantly, how is the the next round of the World Cup qualifying has gone! I'll start with the preview, and well, it's not good. Even with yet more improvements to the youth coaching and recruiting. The next intake is only going to be average with no-one to look forward to apparently. We're not at Bengaluru's level of amazing intakes just yet! Champions League with Goa. I expected to finish bottom of my group with 2 draws, I honestly thought it was going to be a bad time for us as we were probably one of the weakest teams in the entire group stage. Couldn't be further from the truth! A truly great run. We weren't outclassed like I thought and we deservedly qualify for the next round where we face Al-Gharafa again. As the top seed we play at home 1st leg, but given the choice, I'd rather play the 2nd leg at home right? Bengaluru also finished top of their group which is great for them and Indian coefficient points. Kerala and Guwahati both lost in the qualifying rounds both winning in their 1st games but losing the 2nd. We've had a good start to the league but it's all very close and will be a tough run in with multiple teams in with a shout of winning the league. As long as we finish top 4 so we get Champions League football again, that's all I care about. I made 3 signings at the start of year and all Indian. I tried to get a foreign guy in to make us better, I tried multiple times to get a couple of loans but was unable to. 2 of the signings were from Bengaluru, we'll start with them. Franky Chatterjee was released by them and I snapped him up straight away, we needed a new right winger and he does the job very well. This guy is on loan though, but he is an important member of the team Tomba Singh I was very surprised to see this guy released. Not only was he a starter for Jamshedpur but also India, I guess they had to release him for wages or maybe he had no desire or signing a new ]contract? Either way, here's Motiur Rahman Hossain a pacy left winger who started immediately. Right India. It's been absolutely awful. There. I guess we're still too young? Which is true, the team still needs to develop in age and in skill. But if my best players are practically all under 22, what can I do? It's not been fun playing with India I can promise you that haha. I'm really hoping we don't get fired as that would be the end of the story. On that bombshell. Until next time.

Because it was just the league to focus on, I've actually gone through and blasted through the entire season. It was definitely an up and down season as you'll see, but overall. A successful first season with Goa for me. During the season I got the chairman to upgrade the youth coaching and recruitment twice! We didn't see the benefit of that this year trust me haha, as you'll soon see. But next year's intake should be something nice hopefully! Speaking of the chairman, he pumped in some of his own money to help with our losses at the end of the season, top guy. I like him. I may as well get into the youth intake as we're on it, this year wasn't great, I only ended up signing 2 players Which were Parveen Singh and Nitin Negi. All the others wanted a large wage and i wasn't willing to give them one for the players they were/had a chance to grow into it. Nitin doesn't look amazing, but there's room for growth and if anything will be a good reliable backup in the future. Whilst Parveen looked good on the report, he won't be super amazing but he could end up a good squad player. At 5'9 though. I might look to train him as a DM, he's just a little too short to be a CB for me. So I didn't know how this team was going to fare. I was hoping for playoffs but would've been happy with midtable and missing the playoffs as that what was what the board wanted. The start of the season didn't help. I won the first 3 then only had 1 win the next 5 games including 2 losses in a row at home. It was hard to know what would happen long term, but the good news is. We'll be playing Champions League football next year baby! We finished a brilliant 2nd! We lost in the playoff semis so we didn't have a chance to win the League but I will take finishing behind my old and far superior team Bengaluru, who actually lost the final again! Speaking of Bengaluru, they had an AWFUL time in the Champions League without me. Only winning 1 of their 6 group games. PATHETIC. Due to a poor performance from them, we've lost 2 teams straight into the group stage. Kerala though had a fantastic season! Winning the league and getting through to the main final of the Confed Cup but losing meaning an Indian team has been in the Final 3 of the last 5 years but lost. Who's gonna win it first?! As for India, I got what I wanted. Comfortably qualifying from the 2nd round into the 3rd. We beat East Timor and Tajikistan easily but lost to Japan in both ties against them to see us through to the same round we lost in last time. Can we do better and maybe get into the 4th round or better yet, finish top 2 and go straight to the World Cup? Somehow, I doubt it! Until next tine.

Due to a much smaller wage budget than I was used to, I've only been able to bring in a couple of players into this Goa team, both foreign and both free agents. 1 decent and 1 who is the best player on the team! Starting off with decent we have Nima Mohktari who is an Iranian natural at DM and CM. Relatively cheap wages and he's put in some very solid performances so far in his very early career here. He's 29 on a 2 year contract, I won't be giving him a new 1 come renewal time. The star guy though, is a lovely guy from Jordan Amin Al-Shanaineh young and again sort of cheapish he can play anywhere over the half way line, which is exactly what I love and need from our foreign imports. I am mainly using him as a striker so far. Through 7 starts, he has 10 goals. We have a clear and unchallenged #1 here in Goa, a nice young starter in Himanshu Chatterjee who unless gets injured will play every single game this year. Funny thing is, I tried to sign him a couple of years ago from Guwahati. I offered them over £70k over a couple of installments but they rejected it and sold him to Goa for £35k upfront, oh well, I've got him here now. Our defenders are definitely the weakest point in the squad and something I'm going to try and improve going forward. It doesn't help that they are all very young either. There's only 1 real good guy, a Syrian import Fares Arnaout who is a really good CB and here for 2 years, so it's nice to know we've got a rock to rely on. The midfield is our strongest area 100% including a couple of Indian internationals in Harpreet Ghotra and Prasanta Basak. I've also included the strikers too, not much to write home about. However, our strong midfields and wingers should make us formidable on both sides of the pitch. I've shown you the 2 foreign guys, so let's quickly look at the 2 Indian internationals. Though ignore the star ratings, my ass man is a bit terrible haha. This is Ghotra like I said, the star rating makes him seem better but he's not too terrible. Same for Basak Finally some Indian news. Our World Cup group has been drawn and we should 100% qualify from our group this time, whereas last time I was bit apprehensive. I'm excited to get into it and be on our way to the World Cup. Well, at least be on our way to the 2nd round of qualifying! Until next time.

I've left Bengaluru. Boom, big news right off the bat. There was nothing else I could do there. Won the league multiple times, won the Champions League. Got their youth coaching and recruitment to the highest levels possible and improved both training facilities so it was time to move onto another Indian team. I was going to stay and join a team mid season if I needed, but I saw a job going and went for it. We are now at Goa. They are predicted a mid table finish so I don't have much pressure for the first year at least. They currently have average youth coaching and recruitment which we can work with but below average facilities for both, so we'll try and improve them when possible. We have a young squad and a couple of decent players but I'll see what I can do in transfers before the season starts. I am going to take full credit for this next piece of news. India had only 1 Champions League place at the start of the save. Due to me getting Bengaluru to 2 Confed Cup finals and winning the Champions League I have turned India's co-efficient around. Starting next year, 5 teams will be playing in the Champions League. 5!!! Absolutely amazing. This will only mean good things for the league and for India as a whole. I left Bengaluru in a good state, not taking any players or backroom staff. The replacement for me doesn't look too great but he's got a very solid team and hopefully doesn't mess it up. He will have to do the job without his star striker Naveen Wani though who has been sold to Porto for £70k and a friendly. That was my last bit of business, he wasn't going to sign a new contract so was going to walk for free so I had to do something. In January he had agreed to join Leicester for £85k a friendly and 50% sell on fee but wasn't granted a work permit. In that period 5 teams wanted him and I had them all agreeing to the same deal as Leicester, I was disappointed when that move collapsed. Hopefully he can develop at Porto and their amazing facilities to help India out. Speaking of India. We won another SAFF. I'd imagine we're going to win this every time it's on. We're so much better than these other nations, it's almost a chore playing them. Another Indian team had an international tournament and they did absolutely brilliantly! They got through to the Quarter Finals at the U20 World Cup! What a brilliant run, and by no means was it a shame to lose only 0-1 to a very good Colombian side. What a fantastic effort. Until next time.

Boy oh boy. That's all I'm going to say. So, the Asian Nations Cup. We only made it out of the group stages! Oi oi! What a great start that was for us! Maybe it wasn't 1st, but it was joint 1st so I was technically right! Kuwait were a little tough but it doesn't matter, we got through and rewarded (Unfortunately) with a tie against Qatar. There were plenty of other teams I would've preferred to have got. But as you can see, they outclassed us. Plain and simple. We're just a little too young and not good enough to trouble the big boys in Asia just yet. A good showing by us though and great experience for these young men. But as we're on the subject of India, the U20s are in the World Cup!!! So that's great news and will hopefully help the game to see India are getting better at football and will trigger some kind of growth! Good luck to them. To Bengaluru we go and we'll start with the youth intake from this year....and it was very disappointing. We didn't have a single elite talent come through and I think I signed 4/5 guys. None amazing so I won't waste my time our yours by showing you. I'll cut to the chase as well, we DID NOT win the league this year. We lost in the semi finals of the playoffs, even after we finished 15 points clear in the league. There's a reason why we lost in the semi finals (On penalties I must add) that's because we were resting players due to the Champions League...strap yourself in. So we played Al-Ahli despite having them in the group stages where we couldn't be separated so I knew it would be tough, first leg away, we lost. We got dominated and were lucky only to lose by 1 goal. Leaving it all to do at home. The home tie. OH MY GOD!!!!! When they scored in the 84th minute I gave up all hope. The quick equaliser got us back into the match before an INSANE 93rd minute winner made me say very loudly "CHATTERJEE!" luckily my girlfriend wasn't home to experience that haha! Just an FYI, compared to them, we spend £34k a week on wages. They spend £879,300k a week. ****ING SEE YOU LATER SAUDI OIL MONEY BASTARDS! Next up was Sharjah in the U.A.E who'd I'd consider weaker than Al-Ahli. The first leg was away, they only had 1700 odd fans in a 20k seater stadium too, very poor showing by them, wass their team poorer? They were, but so were we. Lucky to walk out of there with a 0-2 win, could we handle business at home? Of course we could! This was a much better game. Them scoring early had be a bit apprehensive but 2 quick goals by us settled my nerves and we were now in the semi finals! Playing Ronaldo's real life team Al-Nassr. Well we had a good run. This team is a lot better than us with better players. We were at home first, just keep it respectable. Oh we did more than that, we gave them a great game! And yes, that is Dominic Solanke haha! Next up, going to their stadium to no doubt be given our loss and exit from this tournament. OR GO INTO THEIR GAFF AND WIN A SCRAPPY MATCH! FINALS BOUND! LET'S GO ****ING MENTAL! What a glorious fairytale! Btw, they spend £1,208,800 a week on wages compared to our £34k (: **** you again Saudi oil money. Champions League final baby. Over 2 legs against South Koreans Gwangju. First leg away again. ANNNNNNNNND they humbled us. It was a good competitive game but their 10 shots on target killed us. We got a late last minute goal to give us some hope though? My proudest achievement to date on Football Manager. Lads. LADS! ****ING LOOK AT IT! CHAMPIONS OF ASIA!!! There is no ****ing way we should've won this tournament. We probably shouldn't have gotten past the first knockout round. I can't believe it. What an incredible journey. I am absolutely thrilled. My first time winning the Asian Champions League. This will not only boost Bengaluru but also India, hopefully. We got just over £3m for winning and with other money gained for winning along the way, it's all been pumped into youth and training facilities. One more for good measure. LET'S ****ING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Until next time.

This might be a long one and will test the limits of how much I can post I'd imagine. We have been given what I consider to be an easy Asian Cup group with Kuwait (103), Lebanon (119) and Thailand (87) whilst we're ranked 109. That's because I don't play friendlies so we've dropped down the World rankings. Top 2 go through, I'll be disappointed if we don't win the group to be honest. We have an average age of 21, which is stupidly low for an International tournament but our best players are young, I can't help that! We have a very bright future as manager of this massive country! I will be keeping with our 'keeper Gurpreet he is better than the other 2, despite what the star rating says. Not by much, but he still is the best GK for India. Though, maybe this will be the last major tournament that statement will be true. Rohan Luthra starts the game at Cardiff, but in this game he's moved to India and has been here for the last 3 years. Chatterjee is a nice regen who came through the ranks of Guwahati but now plays for Goa. Whilst he looks good, I am hoping for a better regen to pop his head up soonish. I wanted to start off by saying this was a young group of players in the defense, but the whole team is as I stated up there. What an idiot. 2 of the defensive players both start the save in England and like the GK, have made their way over to India. The first being Kam Kandola who starts at Wolves and as you can see is currently wanted by Luton. The 2nd being Will Andiyapan who starts the game not only at Tottenham! But also as Welsh! This is the first time I've been able to call him up. He immediately becomes the best LB our country can muster though our own LB isn't close off of him. Sachdev you know as ours and Mohammed Singh I'm not being biased by picking them, they just are very good options for India including Sachdev who ignore the star ratings, he's better in almost every aspect over the other 2 guys. In Mo's case, he's the best Indian CB in the world at 17. I know it looks like I only have 2 CBs in the squad, literally every defender excluding the backup LB can play CB naturally, no worries there. The 2 Singhs who both play RB are very good options to have, versatile and when they do come on as subs, won't be playing poorly. This is the Welsh guy! Next up we have our DMs and midfielders led by our brilliant DM Saini as I've said a couple of times, he was here at the start of the game and he's improved massively becoming a key player not only for Bengaluru but India too AND he can still improve. Arjan Raikhy hasn't really developed well at all, only gaining +3 in total in his time with us since joining from Villa. But he is solid and does a great job. Harpreet Ghotra starts the game at Frankfurt of all places! But like many others, he plies his trade in India. Solid but not spectacular. Chhangte at AMR is pretty poor tbh, but he can basically play anywhere in the second half of the pitch and that's valuable. Hossain is good without being insane, but he's a natural left footed winger which there aren't too many of in India and being very quick will help out against smaller nations I hope!. Shaiza and Basak are handy backups but they're not too good in the grand scheme of things. This is how Saini has developed since the start of the game. Luckily the skills he's been poor at are the ones I couldn't care about! Hossain as you can see is an alright winger, just hoping him being an athlete will benefit us, as you can see, he's been capped a few times. Finally we have the strikers and for some reason Chatterjee wasn't included in the last filters but was included in this one, anyways. We have 4 players, here. Wani, Singh, Rawat and Chatterjee. Yash Ansari who plays for Guwahati is a lovely young talent who could maybe do a job for League One team. But maybe I'm just being biased. Wani will be starting for us but he has my Golden Boy Rawat waiting in the wings to strike if he doesn't perform. Yash Ansari Right that's our squad, time to get into this tournament. Hopefully I don't get embarrassed. Until next time.

Let's get straight into Champions League action...WE'VE MADE IT OUT OF THE GROUP! We played some really good football. We didn't win the group, but we came a close 2nd which got us into the knockout stage. Funnily enough, we play the Saudi team we had in our group over the 2 legs. We should've really won the group, but we couldn't score in the final game to secure victory and finish top. Undefeated though baby! 2 draws couldn't separate us and Al-Ahli so it'll be interesting to see what happens in the knockout round. 5th year in a row, golden generation incoming from our youth intake. The report itself doesn't sound too promising though. So come March, we'll see what happens. We're currently top of the league, 6 points clear with a game in hand. It's probably ours already haha. 1 loss from 14 games, but that team was heavily rotated so no complaints from me. We have received the 1st offer of the career so far from England for one of our players! Stoke wanted Naveen Wani who's been developing alright and playing really well for us. I turned it down as it wasn't enough. A couple of days later he came to me telling me he was gonna explore his options, a couple days after that Sunderland came in for him. It wasn't enough, I countered the offer. £70k, 50% of the next sale and loaned back until the end of the season. I forgot to add a friendly in, too late now. There's no point keeping him here, he will develop more with their excellent youth facilities and better standard of football. Here's a look at him. I don't want to lose him, but it makes sense to let him go. I'm gonna do another post straight after this as we've got the Asian Cup and I think we can do sneaky good, so we'll have a look at the state of the Indian team as we haven't looked at that yet. Until next time.

Whilst I initially agreed with that upon seeing him for the first time, he's not developed as well as I would've liked. Obviously still so much room to grow. Hey dude, glad to hear that. It's starting to become a little exciting now I've got a young, talented and bags of potential for not just my Bengaluru players but some of the players produced at other Indian teams are shaping up nicely too!

We start this update just before I kick off our Champions League campaign and our group contains a team from Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan and you know what? I think we can finish a strong second....which in the grand scheme of things means absolutely nothing as only top place goes through. However, that would be an improvement from last time we were in the comp. The big match is the team from Saudi as the other 2 teams I think we have enough about us to beat them. Cue to me later on finding out they're a lot tougher than I was thinking! Last year we didn't sign a single player, keeping our squad together. However, this time we lost 4 players (3 first teamers) and got in 4 players. 2 of the players we lost were quite big ones. Jhingan the Indian CB moved to another Indian team. His attributes were beginning to plummet and with the emergence of our regen Mohammed Singh I was happy lose him. Long time key player Spanish Pablo Perez also left us, both on free transfers as Perez has gone back to Spain where he will earn more money. He was fantastic for us, but just getting on at 33 and I felt with the abundance of young talent we had, I'd rather be blooding them in than keeping old Spanish boy around. First signing, he's been here for the last 2 years. Tried to sign him on a free last year, didn't work. However, he's here full time now from Sheffield United from a pre-contract agreement Sai Sachdev just a solid RB and will be for years to come. Losing Jhingan meant we were a little short at CB, so I signed a free agent who gets the nice Asian foreign player spot as he's from Indonesia to allow us to get another foreign player in if needed. He's not incredible, but still a little room to grow as he's young and he'll be a great cover player for us. Gede Effendi. I took a flyer on another young CB from America though technically he was in Germany, I won't show him though because he might not develop and you'll never hear about him, but if he does well I'll show you, good determination but has to work hard to get his stats up. Finally, I've got another foreign player in, however, not a marque signing which is usually the case in leagues like this. I needed cover for DM and the left side of the field and this player does it both. He's alright and that sums him up perfectly. Guinean international Alseny Soumah. Before the season starts we're already in the red! However, instead of the projection saying we're expected to be near -£2 million come the end of the season, it only states we'll be -£365k which I'd be thrilled about if that was the case but I think it'll be a lot more than that! India U23's played in the U23s Asian Nations Games and they started with an absolute mauling of Palestine 14-0 including our boy Rawat scoring 7!!! They finished off the group beating Saudi Arabia and Jordan too. Couldn't ask for more, only conceding once as well. However, in the second round they lost 2-3 to Qatar. The future is very bright for this Indian national team hopefully. The last 2 U23 tournaments we've been eliminated at the group stage, to win all 3 is very, very encouraging. Until next time.

This update can be named. "The Good, the bad, the average" We'll start with the bad. That's us losing in the main Confed Final yet again to a Syrian team!!! Clearly not a competition they want us to win with Bengaluru. To be honest, it was a bit of a quiet affair. Their goal was the only highlight of the first half and we had the only second half highlight. A bit of a bad way to finish the competition especially as we were playing AT HOME! Disaster, I really thought we'd be able to secure victory and a very nice winners prize money too. The path to the final was pretty straight forward, I didn't expect to lose any of the other games and I thought we'd win the Final, but it wasn't meant to be. As you can see, it was plain sailing once we got out of the group stages. Moving on from the disappointment of the Confed Cup we'll go to the league, and we won the table format of the league pretty comfortably. We finished the league with 3 losses, 2 were intentional due to rotating the team due to Confed Cup games and only 1 loss I wasn't expecting compared to at least 4 last year. A definite improvement from last and exactly what I wanted from the boys. Which is the good. I also realise from that shot you can clearly see the 'C' next to us on the table, so yes. We made our way through the end of season playoffs and were crowned Champions of India for a third year in a row, we are the best team in India and it's not close. Now with the average, the youth intake. After last year's incredible lot coming through, I had high hopes this year and it was alright. Mostly bad, but a couple of good ones. We'll start with the CB John Dey who was immediately disregarded as he was 5'7. My CB's aren't being 5'7 I don't care, unlucky. He wasn't good enough to be trained as a DM or a RB fully either, the stars lied to me there haha. I'll only show the other two supposed elite talents as everyone else aren't that great. Here's Tapan Pal is he going to be the next Ramos? No, but he's decently well rounded. The low determination isn't great, but he's fairly professional which makes up for it a little bit. He'll be an alright addition to this team and will be okay for the standard of the Indian League but that's about it. We were gifted two really exciting strikers in last year's intake and we've gotten another now. Lalliansanga Gupta is someone to be reasonably excited about. He's already the best finisher that the club can offer and probably the whole of India to be honest. Okay mentals paired with okay physicals means he's never going to be outstanding in the wider world of football, but he's a decent young talent who has the potential to be described as the best striker in India in a few years time provided he doesn't suffer a broken leg like someone we know... So this next season will more than likely be the last with Bengaluru as there's not much else I can do. Yes, I could try and stick around to improve the training facilities but that's very hard. We're operating on a loss every year, there's just not enough money to allow us to keep our head above water, trying to upgrade facilities will only make the financial situation worse. If I end up other Indian teams, I could at least push for increases to youth coaching and recruitment, that's something at least and as this is an Indian career rather than Bengaluru, I'm trying to not have an attachment to just one team! Nothing has happened with India since the last update, the next tournament is the Asian Nations Cup which doesn't start for another 249 days in the game. Until next time.

Anyone got any spare bleach I could use?

Gonna drop in mid season to give a bit of an update, not much has happened, but also to look around around at the other teams facilities to see how they've fared since the start of the save. We've dominated the league from the start, much better than last year! Only 1 loss, but that was due to only having 12 available players due to 8 players being called away to the U23 Asian Nations Cup. Going with the youngsters has proven beneficial, they've not let me down and they are improving everyday as players. We're currently 7 points clear with a game in hand over 2nd and 3rd so we're absolutely cruising! Hopefully this is the turning point and from now we dominate this league year after year now. As for the Confederation Cup, OBVIOUSLY we walked the group, even with rotated 11 for a couple of the games. We play Mumbai in the South Asian Zone Final. Our intake preview yet again has told me that we're heading for another golden generation. However, I'm not going to pay too much attention going forward. Last year we weren't advertised to have 2 really good strikers but we did, so maybe the intake preview is complete bollocks?! If it is true, I don't need 3 left wing backs!!! Talking of intakes. We have exceptional youth recruitment and coaching paired with adequate training facilities for youth and first team. How are the rest of the league faring though in helping me develop India. Team Youth Coaching Youth Recruitment Training Facilities Youth Facilities Kerala Average Average Below average Below average Guwahati Average Average Below average Below average Mumbai Excellent Average Below average Below average Goa Average Average Below average Below average Jamshedpur Adequate Above average Below average Adequate Odisha Average Basic Basic Basic MHDN FC Fairly basic Fairly basic Basic Poor Hyderabad Average Fairly basic Basic Basic Aizawl FC Average Average Basic Basic Chennai Average Average Below average Below average Mohun Bagan Average Average Basic Basic Bengal Fairly basic Average Below average Basic Not really a great outlook for Indian football, I'm not going to get much help here. I'm strongly considering doing maybe doing 1 more year at Bengaluru and then taking over the job at another team here when it becomes available. This way, I can at least have more influence and help the nation grow. Until next time.

It's always best to just be straight to it, no beating around the bush. We won't be playing in the World Cup in the next edition. Boom, plaster ripped off. We lost the remaining 4 games and deservedly so, not a single game I felt hard done by, we ended up on a 7 match losing streak They were all simply too good for us at this stage, although I have high hopes for the next campaign. We are a very young team full of regens because they're our best players, highlighted by this stat from the South Asian Football Federation Championship which we played after the disappointing WC qualifying where our average age in the squad was 19!! We didn't qualify for the WC but we pissed the SAFF winning all 5 games without conceding a goal. I hated it though, with the matches too close together my squad were so tired come the Final. However, I think it's the first ever International tournament I've won on any FM. I don't really do International management normally. During all of this I forgot to go in depth on the stats from last season with regards to possession, shots etc from the League, but I guarantee we would've been top for things like that as always as that's just the brand of football I have us playing. Speaking of the league though....CHAMPIONS! Despite playing a bit poor toward the end of the season, we emerged victorious in the playoffs. We may have finished 2nd in the league table but we went on to lift the title 2 years in a row! HOWEVER. We don't get Champions League football even though we won the title. Because we finished 2nd in the table, we only get Confederation Cup football this year. So potentially more prize money (Which we need as we're currently -£932k) and a chance to lift a continental cup, maybe! Like last time, we have a group with teams from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Maldives. We should smash them all. As well as being Champions of India we won the end of year competition called the Super Cup where we won all 4 group games too. However, won a grand total of £0. So that was worth it. Before we look at the squad, our youth coaching was upgraded despite a big fight from the board, we now have the highest rated youth coaching and youth recruitment you can get. Let's have a look at the squad for this upcoming season. Gurpreet hasn't seen much regression. He's still going strong at 33 and is clearly our first choice GK as well as for India. Ayush who we got 2 intakes ago is developing nicely playing for our U21s but still some way off. He'll never be great, and there are at least 2 better regens than him already in our league so his chances for an Indian cap are looking remote tbh. Defense wise, we're looking alright except it might be my downfall that I'm putting my trust in the youngsters to be my backups. If I get a serious injury to my starters, I could be screwed, but let's not think negatively. Still led by the brilliant Brazilian Philipe Maia who I would say is the best CB in the league and one of the best players in the league. Sai Sachdev is back on loan from Sheffield United and will be our RB, we did have a pre-contract agreement but Sheff triggered a 1 year contract extension annoyingly. Sandesh will partner Maia but this will be his last main season as an important player as his regression has started to him a little hard, too many downward pointing arrows haha! Because of this, Mohammed Singh will be seeing a lot of time this year over him. Our starting LB will be Farukh D'Souza he's a bloody good youngster who needs the playing time, but he will be a good player for us and even better player for India in the next couple of years. Now we have the rest, midfield and attack. As much like the last 2years, our DM's are Saini and the wonderful Arjan Raikhy who recently signed a new contract. I've got him for another 2 years at least! Saini who we've had from the start of the game is a good option but he could be replaced if the right guy comes along whether through transfer or intake. We are still led by the incredible Perez, Gomez and Louis what a front 3 we have there. Though this could be Perez's last year with us. His incredible mentals are there but physically and mentally he is getting worse and there could be better options out there. Our AMR is a young guy and he won't be anything special but we don't have anyone else there. Despite Ogana Louis signing a new 2 year deal with us, his playing time will be cut this year just to get my 2 golden boys on the pitch in Wani and Rawat as they're more important. One last little bit, the Indian legend Sunil Chhetri retired, but I didn't let him leave! He's here as an Under 18's coach to help teach the next generation...he is an AWFUL coach though. Some coaching courses will help improve him a little. Until next time.

We've never had a proper food striker with decent finishing, so to try and combat that I play a Tiki-Taka style with the main focus of getting the ball in the box so with the lower finishing of my players doesn't matter too much as the goal is right in front of them. Until it does matter and I'm having all the shots and no bloody goals haha! I'm really happy that I've got him. I'm just a little annoyed we haven't got really good facilities to help his growth, just gotta rely on playing him and mentoring groups.

So I was only joking about dropping down to play in the Confed Cup next year, but judging by the form we've displayed in the 2nd half of the season, we might be playing there. I promise you lot I haven't been throwing games to make my life easier and to get more money, I've played full strength when I can and just been getting unlucky, I have the receipts haha! I'll show you the last 4 losses match reports. We haven't exactly played poorly, just haven't been clinical enough. This poor form has left us 3rd in the table, 1 game in hand and 6 points behind 1st with 2 games left. Not good at all. However, youth intake day is here and FINALLY. Some youngsters to be happy about, An actual golden generation. Good enough for me to show you players. HERE WE GO! Starting off with the worst of the 'Elite talent' players. Shubham Mondal unambitious, poor mentally. Don't expect much from him. Next up Farukh D'Souza lacks the speed to be a good attacking LB however he's determined with okay mentals and decent technically. I needed someone to replace our North Korean LB and might be able to just go with him and commit a little more to youth (If I don't get sacked!) We have an alright CM next in Tomba Singh much like the RM, he's alright. Nothing spectacular. He'll do an alright job for us and is better than some depth we have in the first team already but he's not gonna be member of the starting 11 except during rotates. Our Indian CB Sandesh Jhingan has maybe 1 year left of being usable after this season both for Bengaluru and India, we may have his replacement in Mohammed Singh. Very good mentals already in bravery and aggression. Great heading at 16 and 6'2 as well, might get him to 6'3. Still gotta improve in a few areas but a very good starting point. I wanted 2 Indian strikers, and boy, I got them. We'll start off with Naveen Wani. Got amazing determination and good finishing already, has a lot of room to grow but with that high determination and a driven personality he could go far. He's actually rated higher than the next guy, but I massively prefer the next guy. Finally, here he is. If you got this guy on intake day at Arsenal or Dortmund you'd be happy, let alone Bengaluru! This kid is going to be special and lead not only the club team, but this guy will lead India forward. Enough talk, feast your eyes on Keegan Rawat. Not played anymore India games yet, got a couple at the end of the month I'm in. Let's hope I don't get sacked soon. Until next time.

I've pushed forward by a couple months, I just can't stop playing this save. I'm in love with it! Let's get into it. So, unfortunately there are a few too many reds for my liking. Ignore the Durand Cup Q/F it was an entirely rotated 11, as you know by now. I care nothing for that competition as it offers nothing as a reward for winning. As to be expected the Champions League is a lot harder than the Confed Cup. The Qatarian and Saudi outfits are a class above us. They each have multiple players on their teams who earn in excess of double our ENTIRE weekly wage budget. Coming up against teams like that, we'll never compete. Except if you scroll down we did actually beat Al-Ittihad at home 4-0 amazingly. So maybe it's not that hard, just need to work on a good away tactic. If it keeps up though, might be more beneficial to play in the Confed Cup where we can do better and earn more money. Winning a game in the ACL is only £43k. A lot different from winning in the ECL! Coming 3rd in the group which we did offers nothing either. Speaking of the Confed Cup, both Indian teams won their groups and play each other in the South Zone final, we'll check on them later. Drawing 3 games already in the League has annoyed me, I think we're better than this, but evidently not. We lie in 2nd currently, 2 points behind the leaders Chennai with a game in hand. I believe we'll win the league, but early league form hasn't been great. Overall, a mixed bag to start the year with. We've had our youth intake preview, and for the 3rd year in a row, it's another golden generation incoming apparently. For the first time in 2 years however, we have a rating of over a C at a position, don't get your hopes up though as I haven't, it's only a B haha on full backs. I really would love a proper good Indian striker, that's what we're missing on the national side which we will get into now. Right then. World Cup qualification. It's all been going on. We have played 6 games, 4 more to go and we're exactly where I expected us to be. We're in 5th and haven't scored in 3 games. 4 away games, all losses including a particular stinging loss to Lebanon, a game I expected a least a draw. The away form is quite worrying. 2 homes games, both wins including an incredible 3-2 against Iran. What a ****ing result that was, never expected it. What a game! So that leaves us with 3 home games left and 1 away. The home games will be vital. Automatic qualification is basically gone, Our only hope is getting into 3rd/4th to qualify for the next round. Home win against China will be absolutely pivotal when we play them. Until next time.

I've been wanting to do the facilities from early on, but being in the red for most of the save made it impossible to ask for upgrades, but the amazing Confed Cup run enabled me to get it. Speaking of which, I still can't get over the Melbourne result it was a huge result over 2 legs! However, coming up against much bigger sides in the Asian Champions League haven't been as fun as I'm soon to post about haha!

Let's switch things up and start with some India business yes? So, we had two games left in the first group stage of World Cup qualifying, away to Palestine and home to U.A.E. A win against Palestine would've secured qualification. Except we didn't beat them. We drew 0-0 even after they had a man sent off after the 18th minute, I thought that was it, the win was in the bag. NOPE. Meaning had we lost or even drawn to U.A.E which was expected and Palestine won, we were out of the WC qualifying... Unlucky Palestine. Who did win btw, so this must win game, we pulled through and played brilliantly. Onto the next round of qualifying. Top 2 from each group make it into the World Cup, 3rd and 4th go into another round of qualifying. We'll struggle to make into the next round is my assessment. We have played our first 2 games, beating Lebanon 2-1 at home before getting humbled away by Saudi. Moving onto Bengaluru business. Again we're wasting our time in the Duran Cup haha. We got through our group stage with a score aggregate 29-2 after 4 games. We have our group for the Champions League. I don't rate our chances at all, with only 1 team going through, we're going to be 1 and done I'm thinking haha! We let Lazaro go, he was the only big name to leave, we let a few players leave after their contracts expired and other teams doing a couple of pre-contract agreements. As I said in the last post, or the one before that, I have a much better replacement. Meet Philipe Maia and he's brilliant. So glad we've got him, 2 year deal as well. He was playing in the Saudi 2nd division. He's gonna be awesome for us! I was trying basically nearly every 2 weeks from January to sign this guy on a pre-contract from Sheffield United and he had 0 interest in signing for me. He eventually signed a new 1 year deal at Sheffield, I was able to get him in on loan, hopefully he likes it here and I can approach him on Jan 1st and he'll want to join full time then? This is Sai Sachdev who will be my starting RB for this season. Being able to potentially get him here would be absolutely huge. Time to get into the new season and get destroyed in the Champions League. I'd go through the team showing the positions and who's playing, but there's no new changes or depatures apart from what I've mentioned and this update already seems massive so I will leave you to it, Until next time.

Let's have a little look at some stats, starting out with our lovely little run to the Confederation Cup final, hopefully our last time in that competition with Bengaluru. I'm considering in a few years of going to another Indian team to help build them up after dominating with Bengaluru. No surprises here, the top 3 dudes are the foreign lot in attacking play. In general though, I had a very good squad who played well all throughout the campaign. Maybe the average ratings are inflated due to the **** easy first group stage against the easy teams? Overall though, very happy. Because I'm salty, I do believe that if Ogana Louis was fit, we would've won the final. Louis finished the competition with a leading with 17 goals, Pablo Perez was 2nd with 11 and Alexis Gomez finished with most assists at 10. We were the best team in the entire competition. We didn't finish top with possession though! Adelaide United took that honour with 70% and we finished 2nd with 67%. We finished the competition obviously with most goals at 47, 16 clear of 2nd. However, as I've mentioned, probably because of the easy early group stage... So let's have a look at more of an even playing field, the league. Again leading the way in goals and assists is our marauding front three of international imports. However, our Indian CB Jhingan after 24 games was able to hold onto a really good average rating throughout the season which I'm really happy with. Lazaro was only 0.01 behind him in average ratings so he wasn't exactly poor either, but he shall be leaving this season as I won't be renewing his contract, but much like him replacing the Aussie, I'm replacing him with a much younger, better Brazilian! But more of that another time. Despite winning the league a little easy at the backend, we don't finish with a top 3 goalscorer or assister. Just goes to show how well we played as a team for the season. We dominated the possession table though leading the league with an average of 65% a game, next up was Odisha with 54%. We had the most goals with 58, despite no-one really dominating and taking all the goals. Guwahati were next up with 49. Much like last year, again we lead the way with an 86% pass completion rate and an passes completed of 16,233, nearly 4000 more than the team in 2nd. As i've already stated, I love possession based football when I coach in real life and playing this game. Dominating the ball is my philosophy. It goes without saying we lead the league in total shots taken and shots on target as well. In the league, we only average 52% of our stadium being used, hopefully that can go up in the next few years, with an average of 13,509. I would love to get more fans in watching regularly, it would help grow the game and our finances! The highest average attendance by capacity is Mumbai with 66%, you know what. I'll just do some pictures and we can see them year by year. See if we really are growing. Also, I forgot to mention the post 2 posts before this where I talk about the takeover, the new chairman is Faisal Modkhali. Just after doing that post, my game crashed and I lost about 3 weeks progress. The old chairman still wanted to step aside and we got a new chairman, again no funds but a new chairman called Durga Rai. Right, last little bit before I have an off and pre-season to get into. Finances. We have been in the red for most of the save as we're losing money every month. Hopefully our time in the Asian Champions League can be beneficial for us financially. The last board helped during the season and injected £1m with 2x £500k payments. Hopefully the new chairman and board will do the same otherwise we'd look a lot worse. Winning the league and our Confed Cup brought us in over a million. We're struggling a bit to stay afloat. We spend over £500k more a year than the next team in the league which is Mumbai who fell in the playoff quarter finals in the league. Until next time.

So, what happens when your team gets decimated by injuries, international call ups (Which you did yourself) and a competition where you can't have Under 21s play without registering them? You get this. In our playoff semi final 2nd leg against Guwahati we had to field a cobbled together 11 and no subs. It was stressful and I was thinking we could throw away a 2-0 headstart from the 1st leg and we'd lose out on playing in the Asian Champions League despite winning the league pretty comfortably. We nearly did. Going down 2 earlyish on I was fuming and already thinking we'd lost. But a spirited 2nd half ensured we were able to continue the journey and face Odisha in the final with our team back to full strength basically. And boy, did we need it. They pushed us hard despite us having 61% of the ball, but we got the victory. CHAMPIONS! We lift the trophy, champions of India and book our ticket to the Asian Champions League next year. Get in there! Speaking of continental football... We actually beat Melbourne in the Interzone Playoff!! Truly unexpected. we dominated the ball in both games. 67% at home and 62% away. My possession style football coming in big and giving us an unexpected victory over 2 legs against a team I considered to be much stronger. However, Louis our Nigerian striker got injured in the 2nd leg and would be out of the main final, the actual final of the Confed Cup against a team from Syria, Al-Jaish a team I thought we'd win against. Wrong, we missed our Nigerian Nightmare big time. We couldn't score after a very even game. Unfortunately we watched them lift the Cup. We still pocketed £650ish from losing which really helped...but it stings to lose in the final. Oh well, you can't win every single game. On the bright side, we used the money from our good Confed Cup cup run to good use. The training facilities will only go to average which isn't amazing, but it's a start. The board refused the improvement to youth coaching and recruitment but after a quick debate they agreed to do it. Hopefully with excellent and established, we can maybe start to see the improvement in the next couple of intakes as the previous 2 haven't been good. Last little bit in this update before we look at the squad and some stats in the next post which I'll do right after this one. India. We played U.A.E away and lost, which was expected but only 1-0 loss, though they dominated the game with 73% possession and 15 shots compared to our 8. A loss was always expected but only by 1 goal makes me think at home, we could maybe do something? However, the next game at home to Chinese Taipei we dropped points due to an early red card. The 92nd minute goal was a real killer as we played alright despite being down to 10 men. With 2 games to go. U.A.E are on 9 points, we're on 6, Palestine on 4 and CT on 1. We played Palestine away and U.A.E. at home. A win against Palestine secures a qualification to the next round then a win against U.A.E secures an easier team in the next round (Obviously against a team who came 2nd in their group) so we could maybe avoid a team like Japan or South Korea. Until next time.

Hey thanks dude! I'm having a real fun time playing this. Hopefully gonna be a long, fun career! It's good to hear that others are enjoying it as well.

It's been a couple of months in game time and we've just had the youth intake so it's a good time to come back and show what's been going on! Despite it being labelled as a golden generation, again it wasn't haha. I doubt we'll get anyone ever stupidly good, the game importance in India is just too low. But maybe with development, we can do something with them. When looking at youth teams in India when teams have been announced there are some alright looking youngsters, just not on our team, yet! Franky Chatterjee is the only one worth showing as our only 'Elite' prospect but he's never going to be elite. It's hard to sign many of the players due to their unreal wage demands, all wanting in excess of £300 a week. Considering we're hemorrhaging money every week as it is, it's just not viable and probably won't be anytime soon. We were very impressive in the last bit of the league, winning every game except in game where I rotated the team for the Confed Cup South Asian final first leg which we won and the second leg which we got near £400k for winning which we really needed. Upon winning that we moved on to the Interzone playoff where we're playing a North Korean team called Hwaebul but as you can see, a nice 4-0 first leg win. We're playing them next where looks like we'll be playing Melbourne City, I expect them to ANHILIATE us haha. Not looking forward to that. We finished the league top of the table but as we know from last year, that doesn't mean we've won. We've gotta go through the playoffs, so we need to maintain our good form and make sure we win to get into the Asian Champions League next year. We also have experienced a takeover which is nice, new fresh leaders in the boardroom....however it was an internal takeover and not some billionaire Indian who's going to pump money into the club! It was also really quick, the ex-chairman revealed he wanted to step aside and within 2 weeks, a new leader was unveiled. India! As for our continuing World Cup qualifying, we play U.A.E away and Chinese Taipei later in the month of March. We have to win against CT especially as I'm expecting a loss to U.A.E. Maybe I can prove myself wrong? I don't think so. I'd take a draw if it was offered to me now. Until next time.

We've just ticked over into January 2024 and things are going well. We're continuing to play well and get some good results, let's have a check! So We did win every Confed Cup game by at least 2 goals, we were just so much better than these other teams. Our reward for topping the group with +25 goal difference is a South Asian Zone Final against Jamshedpur who won their group, This is all new and exciting to me. That two legged final isn't until mid February, it'll be interesting to see what happens if we beat them. Mumbai only had 2 wins in their group stage and didn't get through, The loss in the league at home to Goa was stupidly infuriating. We didn't play bad, we played brilliantly, but just got unlucky. I'll post a match recap below so you can see how unlucky we got. The draws were we played well just not good enough to win. However we sit top of the table with a game in hand on the team in 2nd. Hopefully we remain at the top until the end of the season! We've had our youth intake preview and much like last year it doesn't look to be promising despite being told it could be a golden generation and that we upgraded the youth coaching and recruitment. I guess we'll have to wait until March to see! INDIA! We had a fantastic start to our World Cup qualifying group! Not only did we win the 2 games we were meant to against Palestine and Chinese Taipei but Palestine beat U.A.E which could be huge! I expected U.A.E to win this group, so to suffer a loss to Palestine could severely dent their chances to come top! Until next time.