erik45

September 2029. Out of the cups, but we are getting our groove on in the league! Three games where we won the game by three goals, that's just an amazing performance level. We got unlucky against Halesowen and our 2nd XI did what they could in the FA Trophy. Table. We are moving to the right direction. Awards. As we were so dominant in the league this month, it was not a surprise that we got the player of the month and the manager of the month awards. Contract. As I got the manager of the month award, I decided to try my luck and ask for a contract extension. Current contract is until the end of the season (with a +1 year promotion clause), but the board was not ready yet discuss a new deal. Finances. We are doing really well, I think this might be the month with largest profit so far! Upcoming fixtures. A busy month of five league games and the start of our league cup campaign. We are in a good form, but that's not a guarantee we are going to continue it. Mossley game will be the most difficult as they have won all the league games so far.

August 2029. Wins in the cups, losses in the league. I'm actually happy with this. Yes. we are in the relegation zone, but it feels like thing are starting to click again. In the last game of the month I used our 2nd XI for the first time - and it worked almost well The OGs have been in good form as both Robert Jones and Kian Reddy have been scoring a lot, as Fagan 29a has been providing good chances for them. Table. I'm not worried at the moment, I think we have a good chance of climbing up quite quickly when the cup games are over. Top players. As we have lost dozen(s) of good, young players from our academy, we are again in a position where real players are the best in our team. Fagan 29a is on his own league, but after that all the players with 3-3,5 CA are real players. Upcoming fixtures. Six games (and even more if we advance in the cups), unusually busy September. The 2nd XI will play at least the FA Trophy game, but if we get more mid-week games, the 2nd XI will get more playing time.

Pre-season friendlies. A very solid pre-season! Most of the opponents were a bit weaker than us, but the Guernsey game showed we still are capable of playing well against team on the same level as us. Season expectations. This doesn't look too rosy. These are worst odds we have had, but I'm optimistic we can get at least top half finish. It is funny that the player who just turned 16 a month ago is both the hot prospect and the key player. Seven new teams in our league, although we have faced some of them previously. Transfers. Stop the press, we made signings! Both of the players are quite bad, but we need bodies if we keep losing our players at the same pace as last season. Kirnon is a Monsterratian full-back and Martin is a young Gibraltarian striker, who will start with the U21 team. We lost five players in July, including our starting GK, and two CMs. Bailey left a big hole in our starting XI, but his replacement is quite okay (although just 16-years old). Tactics. I made some tweaks to our system. I think using wing-backs left us too vulnerable in some situation, so I changed them to full-backs and gave the midfielders more responsibility of using the wide spaces. It seem like it worked during the pre-season, but the real test is still to come. I insist on using 4-3-3- because I think that IRL it is difficult to get to work. Also, I try to use two different XIs for this season. The first XI for the more important games and second XI mostly for the midweek games (or if needed elsewhere). Upcoming fixtures. We start our season by facing a team from a division below us in the FA Cup before having three league games. Hanley Town were just above us in the final standings last season and the other two are new sides, so these games will give us a good picture where we stand in the league.

xG & xPts table. We were a bit poorer than expected goals & points, but not far away from that. Most teams score and concede more than they are expected to, but we were very, very close to the expected numbers. We were very close to the top in December, but after that we lost our form and never got it back. Team performance tracking. When looking at how we did this season compared to the seasons before this, we were worse. Actually, this was our worst season so far. Only 1,4 points/game, although in the cups we were alright. Board expectations. The board was not happy that we didn't finish in the top half, but there were no consequences. At the end of the season they decided to scrap almost all the objectives and focus on youth development. I'm happy with that! We just need to find the way to keep the youth for some time so we can develop them Finances. Financially very strong year, as it has been the trend throughout the save. I'm not planning to use any of the money, just waiting for the part-time contract option. Transfers. In the first picture are all the transfer that happened this season. We didn't sign anyone (as all the players willing to come to the Isle of Man were sh*t), but we lost so, so, so, so many players. Even after the season had ended, three players left the team. Of all the players who left, 11 players had an important role in the first team. Even if we get very good intakes, we just can't lose this many players each season. Award. Kian Reddy was the top scorer of the league. He scored 25 of his goals in the first half of the season, then everything fell apart (not Reddy's fault). I really hope he can find his form during the summer! New coach. Thorpe has the record of most appearances for FC Isle of Man. As he informed about his plans to retire, I decide to offer him a coach contract. He's a very good coach for this level and I was happy to see him accept such a low offer He has a good mentality, maybe some of the players learn something from him!

April 2029. Well, we were not awful and we ended our season on a positive note. The more experienced players carried us over the finish line. Final standings. In the end our four points from the last three games was not enough to finish in the top-half. Season review next!

March 2029. Disaster. Before the month we still had a chance of making it to the playoffs if we can get in form. But no. These games were mostly 50/50 games, but the luck is not on our side, not at all. Positives from this month are the goals from our new star striker Ger Fagan 29a. Table. We are a mid table side with a relegation form. Things need to change at the end of the season. Tactical desperation. As our 4-3-3 narrow system stopped bringing results, I tested something more boring for the last three games of the month. We got luckier, but the numbers behind the score got actually a bit worse. I will go back to the old system and re-think tactics in the summer. Record. As Fagan celebrated his debut by scoring two goals, he became the youngest goalscorer in the league and in the club. Hopefully this is one of the many records he will crush! Finances. I wanted to show this to bring some silver lining to this awful spring form. Even if we are not scoring and winning, we are still making nice profits every month. I think I will start saving up and maybe at some point I'm allowed to give part-time contracts to players. Upcoming fixtures. Three games left of this awful season. The board and the fans expect us to get a top-half finish, so we need some points from these games. The away game will be tricky, but I think we have a chance of winning the home games.

Youth intake 2029. We have new best player in our team! Loooooads of potential and quite a bit of current ability as well. I'm very happy with this, even if the personalities are not the best. All the players from England are from the Isle of Man, a bit weird, isn't it? My favourites from the intake are (obviously) Ger Fagan 29a, Juan C. Plunkett 29d and Sam Spooner 29f. Here are their profiles: If I have to make predictions, we will lose Fagan 29a in August 2031, Plunkett 29d in December 2030, but Spooner 29f might stay a bit longer if he's not the starting keeper by the time he turns 17. All this would obviously change, if we would get promoted and we could offer part-time contracts. Youth intake tracking. We have as many 5-star potential players and players with more than 1 star CA as we had last year, but when looking at my "key metrics" this year's intake is a bit better. Curiously, we are also getting our intake earlier. The sample size is still really small, but it is interesting because there hasn't been major changes in our reputation or league position. Youth candidate game. I just wanted to show this screenshot because I think this is some kind of bug. I hadn't signed any of the youth intake players, but somehow they didn't play for the youth candidate team. It seems this was the case also last year, but not the year before. Weird.

I have tried it with multiple players, but I see no difference as they might still leave. There are often more than 10 offers/week on our players and those don't stop even if I offer a new contract, so I just haven't bothered offering new contracts with most of the players. With key players, I have tried to offer new contracts. They might accept the new contract and then move to a new club when the next offer comes. So, I really need the promotion so I can offer part-time contracts, but now we are in this vicious cycle where we lose players who are capable of playing this level before they can achieve promotion with us. Maybe I need to focus on players with high loyalty..? I never had this kind of exodus before, and I've done multiple youth only saves in low-level divisions. I think another challenge is that things happen so quickly and unexpectedly. As we get offers all the time and most of those players reject, we really don't know when a player might leave. This season we lost 5 first team players between late July and early August. That just made everything really unbalanced for a month or two. Then we lost four more 1st team players in Jan-Feb. We can adjust, but just not that quickly.

February 2029. Oh... this is even worse than the previous month. We deserved to against Avro and get something from the Witton game, but luck is not on our side at the moment. Table. At the beginning of month, we were fourth. Now we are five points outside of the playoffs. Injury. Last month we lost our only target man Jones for two months, now we lost our best poacher. He hasn't been scoring that much this year, but we still need him to lead the line. More about losing players in the screenshots below: Transfers out. Two more players from the first XI leave us. Lonsdale 28b was not amazing, but did the job, but Jatta 28n had the best CA in the whole team. Nine (!!!!!) 1st team players lost in the last ~8 months. As I have made such a strict transfer policy, there just isn't any good quality players to fill the gaps. Let's hope youth intake will bring some light to this darkness. If someone has ideas how I could be able to offer part-time contracts to players, I'm all ears! Upcoming fixtures. If we want to get back to the playoff battle, we need to win most of the games. The first two are extremely difficult. Well, all these games are, it is very tricky month. I would put us favourites against Vauxhall and Stalybridge. I would be happy with 12 points, but I think we need to get more.

January 2029. Tough month. Kian Reddy lost his scoring boots and it felt like we've been relying on him too much. Table. We are still in playoff spots, but it is very tight. Few losses and we can be down to 10th, few wins and we might be 2nd in the league. Transfer out. Another first team player heading out... he is 7th 1st team player who decided to leave (and all of them have been our youth products). There really isn't anything I can do to this until we can offer proper part-time contracts. Upcoming fixtures. The pace we are losing players is really hurting us. With the team we had at the beginning of the season, we should've been favourites for all these games, but now... I don't know. We are still in the playoff spots, but our form is not good enough to keep us there. We need 9 points or more to stay there. We have a chance to win the home games and maybe get something from the away ones, so it is not impossible.

This is how the league's salary page looks like. I couldn't fit all the teams, but you get the picture. All the teams above us have at least one player with a part-time contract. Warrington Rylands and above are the teams that pay to most of their players. Stalybridge Celtic has been in this division for five years but somehow they still can have a wage budget of 1 m€+/year. They have seven players who earn more than 1000 €/week! I haven't tested what asking for professional status actually means. I think we are in a financial position where we should be capable of offering part-time contracts to our best players, but I don't know how I can ask for that. I don't want to end up in a situation where we need to offer contracts to all the players, we just can't afford it yet. Edit. No option for part-time contracts. And when asking about the board I can only ask for going from semi-pro to pro. I think we need to get better reputation/promoted so we can offer something.

Transfer out. Less than three weeks after turning 17, Gethin Jones 28e gets his first offer from a pro club... and he takes it. Harrogate Town are bottom of the League 2 and Jones 28e only got a youngster contract. I knew I would lose him at some point, but losing him so soon and with a deal that doesn't make too much sense to him... feels bad. Jones 28e had been really good in Target Man (At) position. There's only one possible replacement for him and it is 33-year old Robert Jones, who has started to decline. I think he will do an okay job, but this is a downgrade. Maybe youth intake will bring us a new target man??

December 2028. This is excellent! If we disregard the last game, I would say this was a perfect month. When we score, we score a lot, but when we struggle, we struggle really much. We were a bit lucky this month, we needed to rely on Kian Reddy's monster performances, he scored 10 goals this month! Table. We move up! But we are further away from the top, because Mossley's form is just something different at the moment. Take a look at their last two months in the league: Poacher. As Kian Reddy got his place in the starting XI back, he has been unstoppable! 10 goals this month, 27 in total, that is just crazy. If he stays healthy, he should be able to go for 40+ league goals! Upcoming fixtures. All the teams we face are on the bottom half of the table. This should be five winnable games, but sometimes we really have struggled against teams in the relegation battle.

Upgrade. We are not close to getting youth/training facility upgrades. so I got impatient and asked for an upgrade to our youth recruitment. After a short discussion the board agreed with me! This was just less than two weeks before the youth intake preview, I don't know if the upgrade already "counts" to this intake. Youth intake preview. More players to the attack and midfield, that's really good! Last season we had 4 A's and the rest C or worse. Now we have 3 A's, 1 B and then C's or worse.

November 2028. This really was No-vember... We didn't get anything done. I don't know if it is losing O'Connor or what, but we can't get proper chances at the moment. In the Stalybridge game we scored 4 goals in the first 20 mins - and then stopped playing. They were really close of equalising, but in the end we held our ground. All these teams have been in a good form, but still, four points is not enough. Table. We dropped a lot of points and that means we are outside of playoff positions. If there's some silver lining, it is the fact that we are still just 5 points from the top. Goal50 2028. I just wanted to show this because Kai Havertz is just funny to me. I think he is a good player and can get even better, but not Vini/Haaland/Mbappe level good. Arsenal had 8 players in the top 50! Upcoming fixtures. Seven games is a lot, but maybe we can use them to turn our form. Leek Town has been playing well lately, so it's a tricky start for the month. No major injuries and more than 12 points is what I'm looking for.

October 2028. Good start, bad end. We won the the games I thought to be difficult and lost the "easier" games. Padiham game was especially stupid loss as they scored with their first two shots and then we took a red card... Witton Albion absolutely shut us down, we had our first shot on goal at 79th minute (which we scored). Table. Three wins, two losses is not the best form, but at least we are still in the top group. Upcoming fixtures. No cup games left, so quite quiet month as we have no games mid-week. WD&C is the only game I think we should be clear favorites, the rest are very much 50/50.

Retirement. This happened sooner than I expected, but I can't say I'm surprised. I tried to sign him back as a staff member, but he was asking wages of 350 €/w...

That's an excellent idea, I hadn't thought of that! He doesn't have coach attributes, but I was able to send him to a coaching course. I thought that would actually be quite realistic, sending an older player with long-term injury to get his coaching badges. But, it didn't go as I planned, see below I even tried to appeal it, but the board literally said "In future, please do not waste our time with things like this."

September 2028. League - FA Trophy - FA Cup I think we got exactly what we deserved. In our wins we were convincing, and in our losses we were the second best. I'm not too happy dropping from FA Cup, but our focus is the league. Only two games, but we won them both, no complaining. Table. Two wins means we move to promotion playoff spots! It's still very early in the season, but if we can keep up with the 2 pts/game pace, we should be in the positions 1st-5th. Career-ending injury. Our loyal left-back Kevin O'Connor got a serious injury in the game against Stocksbridge Park. I don't know if any back-up can get close to O'Connors assist number. When I've been managing the team, O'Connor has assisted whopping 88 goals in all competitions, averaging over 20 assists per season! I hope he doesn't retire as I want to give him a proper farewell game at the end of the season. Finances. It is looking good, steady flow of income. Upcoming fixtures. Six games means we need to do some rotation. We don't have too many solid back-up options, but I think we are going to be fine. We are not interested in league cup, so there we will use as much rotation as possible. The first two games might be the trickiest, but at this level, you never know.

July/August 2028. Goals, goals, goals! We scored two or more in all the games, that's the start we wanted! But then there were two games where we conceded way too many. We should've won Whitchurch easily and we didn't deserve to lose against Staveley, but these things happen. Underlying numbers are quite good, so I'm not worried. @shd34_216_42, looks like we have at least some kind of FA Cup run going on! Table. We've been scoring and conceding, no dull days at the office. Let's hope we find a bit more consistency against weaker sides, they seem to be the problem for us at the moment. In-form player. When I was worried about losing our two best players, I was expecting us to take some kind of hit in the both ends of the field. I think the defence is the same as last year, but something wonderful happened in the attack. What happened? Kian Reddy found the form of his life! I guess he wanted to show me we don't need those youngsters searching for glory. Transfers out. Last month we lost two of our best, now we lost two more (maybe not the best, but still good). One more player from the first XI and another who was really, really close of making it in our team. But when big teams come knocking, there ain't much I can do. The sad thing is we don't get any sell-on clauses, but maybe something from the solidarity mechanism (or whatever it is called). But I'm not too worried losing these players as it looks like the players staying in the team are even hungrier of showing their capabilities Finances. Over 2,000 spectators in the cup game (in July) and two other home games makes our bank balance look very nice. Hope we can keep this track so we can afford facility upgrades this season. Upcoming fixtures. Three in the league + two in the cups. I think there will be more games if we advance in the cup(s). I don't care too much about the FA Trophy at the moment, but I really care about the FA Cup. We didn't get the kindest of draws as Mossley are a good side from our division. In the league we face Stocksbridge Park Steels for the very first time before, they got promoted last season.

Pre-season & season preview. Reputation. We are now back on track of getting a better reputation after a small decline a year ago. This should mean e.g. we have more chances of getting good players from youth intakes. Expectations. Top-half finish, that's pretty much it. I expect us to fight for the title. Or I was until late July... more about that in the next screenshots. Transfer offers. This kind of view is a weekly thing during pre-season. I even offered better non-contract contracts to some players to make sure they are very, very happy. But was it enough? Not with all. Transfers out. We lost two of our most important players at the same time. How is it even possible?! This game is so frustrating at the moment... fortunately we have quite good prospects waiting in the U21s, they just need to step up sooner than I expected. Season preview & key players. We were expected 7th before we lost McCrory & Cameron. McCrory was in the media dream eleven. Even after these unfortunate transfers out, we have slightly better odds than last season. So, there is hope! Manager development. I show this as I noticed the personality of Pherick Ramsey has changed from balanced to fairly loyal! I think the coaching and mental attributes are really good for this level. I have no idea how level of discipline is so good, especially as I can't fine anyone yet. Finances. After last season was used to recover from the last youth facility upgrade, we are now back in a strong financial position. I'm not expecting many upgrades this season, but I might ask for a training facility upgrade if we have more than 0,5 m€. Pre-season friendlies. Bradford City was the only opponent that plays on a much higher division than us - so that defeat was expected. We ended the pre-season with a totally chaotic 9-4 win, I don't know if I want to see more or less of that during the season. Upcoming fixtures. The almost traditional start of the season: extra preliminary round of FA Cup, where we host Whitley Bay who play on the same level as us. After that we should have relatively easy start to the league, but you never know what is going to happen.

Season review. We did really well, if you consider we were expected to finish 12th. We got to the same place as last year, but the underlying numbers are much better now (e.g. xGD almost 12 points higher than the season before). I think the main thing was that we got more consistent as the season went on. We don't know what next season brings, but if we can get just a bit better OR luckier, we should be in the title battle. League & xG table. We conceded too many goals, but other than that, this season was a success. The important thing to point out is that we were quite close to our xPts, so we didn't rely on luck. Clitheroe and Workington were just a bit better than the rest, so they deservedly got promoted. Awards & records. We have first awards for a player from the academy as McCrory 27a was selected as the young player on the season as he finished as our top scorer. 18 goals in a season is not amazing, but he shared much of the playing time with our former #1 striker Kian Reddy. In the list below, we have all of our academy players who debuted this season. Transfers. This was very much one way traffic. No transfers in, 4 loans and 5 permanent transfers out. I would've needed Scott 27c in the promotion run and I didn't like losing Harris 26a, but all in all we didn't lose too many important players. A lot of teams are circling around our best talents, but let's hope they want grow together with the team. New contract. As the board was happy with my season, I took that as a hint to ask for a contract extension. My contract was up at the end of the next season, and the board agreed to get one year extension, with an extra +1 year clause if we get promoted.

Yeah, we are in a good position for the next season if we can keep the best talents. This season we only lost one player from the first XI (two players the season before), so it's looking good! The only worry is that reputation declined a bit in the beginning of the season, I don't know how much that will affect our ability to keep players.

Playoff semi final. F**k this. It looked like it's going to be a cagey contest and when we scored the first goal I felt we had a really good chance of advancing. Then our yellow card machine Jamie Doyle did the unexpected and got a second yellow. He's had 11-15 yellows every season, but only once before he has gotten a red card. And now it was time for the second red... After the red card, we changed to a less attacking system. We still wanted to keep the ball to control the tempo of the game. We didn't get things working until some tweaks in the second half. Then we had one chance to equalise - and Murphy 27d took the chance beautifully! I was mentally preparing for extra time. I didn't know how our players had energy for that. But then, at 90+3 minutes, Mossley's Bridgman scored a volley goal from outside a box...and that was it. We lost in the playoff semi finals. Again.

April 2028. Yes, yes, yes. Three clean sheets, three wins. In the only loss, we created much more than the opponent, but they were really, really efficient. Table. Final results are in, and we are once again fourth, for a second season in a row. We were really close of getting a home advantage to playoff semi final, but we are not complaining. Clitheroe clinched the title on the final day. They were leading the league for most of the season, but almost choked in the last two months. Record. We got really close of scoring 100 goals, could we reach it next year? Even though I felt we also conceded a lot, we had the sixth best defence! More about these things in the season review. Injuries. During April we lost two of our starting strikers. Jones has been pivotal for us from the beginning, as he is basically the only one capable of playing target man. Or so I thought... when looking closer at our new youth prospects, I noticed that there was one player who had relatively good attributes of strength, bravery, jumping reach, heading and finishing. He's not the tallest, but at least in previous versions of FM I've had good success with a bit shorter target men (my best target man ever was 183 cm tall). Here's our new target man, Gethin Jones 28e: Transfer offers. I think our new intake has caught the attention of teams in Vanarama... These are all 16-years old, so I can decline all the offers, but as soon as they turn 17, they can choose to leave. If some team offers proper money (and re-sale clause), I would be tempted to do that just to see their value in a better team. Playoff semi final. We face Mossley, who have been with us for all the years, as they got promoted the same year we did. For the past two seasons they've been a really difficult team for us, but I'm confident our good form continues and we can properly challenge them. I would put Mossley as favourites, but just slightly.