Britrock

Have you tried going on holiday for one day to get past it?

Yep, Konami have the license

From worst to best it’s red > orange > yellow > green. It seemed like the obvious choice to me when I set it up years ago!

If I set my in game highlights, camera and replay options in one version of FM it seems silly that when I start a new save on the next edition of FM that I then have to set them all up again when I start a game up. The same goes for things like skin colours, units of measurement, save game frequency etc etc. These are all obviously saved to disk already, so why not save them to a generic Football Manager folder in somewhere like ProgramData so they persist across versions? It's a minor annoyance but something that should be easy enough to implement for an easy win...

Greece is good fun. Only two tiers so teaching the top division can be easy, Olympiacos are dominant but Panathinaikos, AEK and PAOK are all good and have way more money than everyone else. The league is middle of the pack in Europe so you're not right at the bottom and seasons are reasonable with a 14 team league - play everyone twice for 26 games then split the league in half and play your half twice for 12 more.

Cheers the save eventually ran it's course as trying to catch PSG was as impossible as I thought it might be when I started but it's definitely been one of my most fun saves. We got to be comfortably the second best team in France and the knockout stages of the champions league. Good times. The last two years of this challenge have been great actually, both with Hyeres in France and Veroia in Greece. I didn't complete either but it's all about the journey as they say. I'm not sure what FM23 will bring, I'm very tempted to try a hometown Chelmsford city save as I've not done a save in England for years. If I'm back here though I might be tempted by Denmark as I always get loads of great youngsters from there, or maybe a south American nation like Argentina or Colombia...

This is the peak of my save so far, beating Real Madrid 2-0 at home to win our Champions League group and put Real into the Europa League. PSG are impossible to catch in Ligue 1

Hyeres 83 FC - 2039/40 season review Another good season and one that makes me think that we've finally cracked everyone in Ligue 1, bar PSG. We started on an absolute tear in Ligue 1, not losing until our 16th game in mid December when, of all teams, we lost to Ajaccio. We'd even won our last 9 Ligue 1 games before going into that one and I was starting to think we had a title challenge brewing. Annoyingly, including that defeat, over the next 5 games we had 3 draws and 2 defeats which killed any hope of that title challenge. We recovered and from the start of March we went on another 9 game winning streak. Unfortunately we couldn't quite recover enough to get back up to second and ended up in third, behind Marseille on goal difference. In the Champions League we drew Inter and the two Red Bull teams, Leipzig and Salzburg, for the group stage, We lost twice to Inter but beat the two RB teams, so qualified in second place. The draw wasn't kind to us for the knockout rounds and gave us Bayern who were just a bit too strong. We held them to a 0-0 draw in the first leg at home, but lost 4-0 away in the second leg. We should be in the top 25 teams in the European coefficient next year after 5 consistent years. Star players for the year included Mubarak, who has now played for us for 8 years and in his worst season had a 7,29 avg rating. This year was actually his most proficient, with 17 goals and a 7.43 average. Last season's big investment, Lucas Machuca, validated his transfer fee with a 7.32 avg and 7 assists. Peter Kiss kept up his great performances at RB with 6 assists, while Yago was a rock at the heart of defence with a 7.26. Top scorer was obviously Nijs, who had a quieter year and only bagged 18 goals. Most assists was Filipe Costa from midfield with 9. On the transfer front, Dortmund gave me £7.5m for Mihart so I needed to find a new GK. Eduard Strukov kicked off about not playing enough so he was sold to Krasnodar and Waima Diakite never lived up to his potential so I offloaded him to Juve. Yannick David was another who didn't live up to his potential and was offloaded to Paderborn. Luis Aguirre was no longer needed, so he was moved on to Almeria. The biggest exit however was Guillermo Rincon. The Mexican with all the potential in the world just never performed, and with Machuca, Shakano, Costa, Leal and Tomic in midfield he was no longer needed and was taking up a non-EU spot in the squad so we sent him to Palmeiras for £17m. To replace Mihart I signed Francisco Garcia from San Lorenzo for £5.5m. To give some more cover and quality on the left wing I bought in Lucio Dalla Costa from Atalanta for £15m and long term target Miodrag Simic was bought in for midfield cover when we had a bit of an injury crisis early in the season. By the time the January transfer window rolled around, our backup ST role was taken by a youngster who I wanted to bed in (Sebastian Munoz) but he just wasn't cutting it so we needed a fresh face. I found Rafeal Fernandes in Portugal and £15m later he was ours. I also wanted some more quality in the centre of midfield and found Lincon in Brazil who cost £12m. Pavlicic was bought in for some central defence cover with an eye to the future. Financially the Champions League is great, we finished a season comfortably in the black for the first time that I can remember. Next year we have ~£30m to spend and I'm going to offload a few players (Leal and Simic are first on the list to go) to try and increase that. Our training facilities are 4.5* and our youth facilities are 4* with upgrades completed this year and the average attendance is growing nicely, clearing 18,000 this season.

Hyeres 83 FC - 2038/39 season review This was easily our most successful season, one in which we started well and then finished on an insane 22 game unbeaten streak that lasted from early November. We even ended the season on an 8 game winning streak to really tie a bow on the year. We needed every one of those wins as we were chasing Champions League football and France had slipped in the coefficient rankings so there were only 3 spaces available this year. In the end our stellar form meant that we actually ended up second, behind only the eternally dominant PSG. In Europe we had a good run in the Europa League group stages, winning 5 out of 6 to top the group and go straight through to the second knockout round. There we met Benfica, who we stuffed 4-1 in the first leg and held on in the second (a 2-1 loss) to finally make it to the quarters for the first time in the club's history! We drew Borussia Dortmund who were just a bit too good for us however, we lost both legs 1-0 and that was our European run over for another year. Star players as always were Mubarak (7.52 avg, 12 goals, 12 assists), Nijs (7.33, 29G, 5A) and Kiss (7.31, 1G, 6A). Almost everyone performed exceptionally well for us, with more than half the squad averaging over 7.0. New signings included Vitaliy Kopytov, a Ukrainian winger signed to be my backup RB behind Kiss; Yago, a Brazilian centre back brought in to start alongside Gueye; Thomas Rasch, a physical marvel from Denmark for rotation on the left wing; Thiago Leal, another Brazilian, brought in to provide some more creativity in midfield; Eduard Strukov, a Russian striker to provide cover for Mubarak; Andrea Dagnino, purchased as cover for Nijs in case of injuries or someone making an offer for him and the biggest signing of the lot, Lucas Machuca, bought for an insane £45m to take over the DLP role in my new 433. They were all great and performed for the team when called upon. The biggest sale was Marvin Eyama, whom Real Madrid wanted and paid £22.5m for, an offer that was too good to refuse (especially as I'd already signed Yago at that point). Emil Hartvig left after 6 years and 150+ appearances, with Lens paying £12.5m for his services. Troyes paid £2.8m for Ahmed Ibrahim and Mineros took Inaki Aguilera off my hands for £2.5m, the rest of the sales were either youth players who hadn't made the grade or loans. With those signings and the continued development of youth prospect Moussa Diallo (who was the main starter at LB), we had 4 players in the NxGn 50 - Diallo cracked the top ten in 8th, Machuca was 13th, Kopytov in 16th and Rasch in 45th. Financially we're struggling a bit, but half the world seems to be after Gueye now so maybe we can sell him for an inflated amount to clear our debts. Otherwise it's trying to get as far as we can in the Champions League to get as much money in as possible and focus on qualifying again next year. PSG are still in another universe, I doubt if I'll ever be able to catch them

England - World Cup 2038 review We got drawn into Group D with Uruguay and Mali and started with a game against Uruguay. I thought this would be harder than it was, as we hammered them 5-0. Against Mali we improved on that with a 6-0 win to qualify as group winners. The second round draw gave us China, who we thumped 4-1 and the third round saw us going up against hosts South Africa and we absolutely smashed 8-0. In the quarters we finally came up against a little resistance in Germany, but 2 goals in the first 30 mins killed the game off and we came out 2-0 winners. The semis gave us another of our international rivals in Argentina. We actually went behind for the first time in the tournament and were 1-0 down at halftime. After giving the team a rollicking, we came out and scored twice in the first 7 minutes and then saw the game out, although there was a heart attack moment in the 92nd minute when I thought they'd equalised. Luckily VAR came to our rescue and it was juuuuust offside. In the final we came up against Slovenia, a team that could only reach the final in FM. They'd beaten Mexico, Croatia, the Netherlands (!) and Brazil (!!!) on their way to the final. Unfortunately we were way too strong and the game was over within 35 minutes as we took a commanding 3-0 lead. We added a fourth in the second half to run out comfortable 4-0 winners and double England's World Cup title count!

Hyeres 83 FC - 2037/38 season review This season was pretty much a repeat of last, although this time we missed out on the Champions League right at the end and could only finish 5th. It was right in our grasp, but in the third from last game we played Brest (who were 5th) and everything was going great as we held them to 0-0 for 91 minutes only to then concede a late goal that knocked us back to 5th and them ahead of us. In our penultimate game we got back ahead with a win vs St Etienne, but in the final game we could only draw 0-0 with Nice and Lyon capped their run up the table to grab 4th from both ourselves and Brest. In the Champions League we drew Milan, Man City and Shakhtar. We only ever lost by one goal at most, but we just couldn't quite keep up with the top two. We drew with Milan and Shakhtar and also beat Shakhtar in the final game to finish third and go back into the Europa League. There we drew Club Brugge in the first knockout round who we easily dispatched with two 3-1 wins, but Wolfsburg were just a bit too much for us. We lost 2-1 in both legs and went out at the second knockout round for the third year in a row! I tried to get a bit younger on the transfer front this year. Rincon and Costa were brought in as 18 year olds who could start right away, with a view to them being HG in a few years. Fofana was bought in as an older backup to make up the HG numbers for Europe, but got annoyed with not playing much and was sold in January to Qatar. Marovic was bought in as a young backup GK and Amamoo was bought in as cover when I had a few injuries but got loaned out later in the season. On the sales front, Jelert left after five great years. Banam was sold to Mallorca as Costa was his replacement. Straumbotn was sold in January so that Moussa Diallo could come up from the youth team, at 17 he's already Ligue 1 quality and I couldn't hold him back as third in line at WBR (with Kiss as first choice). Also in line to be promoted from the youth team in Luxembourg's great hope, Nedeljko Tomić. The star player in avg rating was again Mubarak, chipping in with 12 goals and 8 assists. Peter Kiss was a revelation this year, with 11 assists catapulting him into the teams of the season at RB. Jo Nijs was again banging in the goals, with another 25 this year. Eyama and Gueye continued their dominance at the back, this year alongside Broetto. Aguirre was shaky the first few games so I dropped him and Broetto was so solid Aguirre never got back in the team. Mihart was again reliable in goal, with a solid 16 clean sheets and only conceding 39 in 39 games. I'm thinking of moving away from my trusted 352 for next year to a 433, keeping all the team instructions the same and moving the AMR up to ST so I can keep Mubarak and Nijs up front and still give Kiss license to roam up and down the right flank. I'm just not sure the 352 is going to get me any further (saying that, I'll probably be back to using it by November of next season!) Financially we're in a pretty good place. We finally moved into our new stadium, 18 months late, and promptly smashed our attendance record with a 25,000 sell out vs Club Brugge in the Europa League. The Champions League is a money pinata as always, even though we didn't get as far as I'd hoped. We have a £20m war chest for next season and, if I'm honest, I might consider bids for any of my players including the previously untouchable Gueye and Nijs. They'd have to be at least £50m to even think about though. We've hit a bit of a rut and if I can make out financially and rebuild I think it might be worth it in the long run.

Is there a bug with new stadiums being constantly delayed? This stadium should have been finished in the summer of 2036 but this is the fourth delay now I think. I had a tycoon takeover a few years back and got promoted to Ligue 1 so they approved this, even though I'd only had a new one open 2 years previously after getting promoted to Ligue 2. Is this the game's way of telling me I can't have two new stadiums so close together?

Hyeres FC - 2036/37 season review We finally made it to the promised land of the Champions League after a great season where we finally avoided a month or two period where we can't score and/or win. We were in a close race with Lyon for 4th but they had a poor end to the season which left it open for us. We limped over the line ourselves, but our two wins over Lyon earlier in the season ended up being the difference. In the Europa League we made things difficult for ourselves in the group, starting with a loss to Genk and a 0-0 draw with Villarreal, but came back strong and only finished second to Genk on head to head (I think?). In the first knockout round we just about saw off Ajax, coming back twice to equalise in the second leg after winning 1-0 in the first leg. The next round saw us we draw Liverpool and we held them to a 1-0 win in the first leg. The second leg was a wild 4-3 loss where I thought we had them for a while but we just didn't quite have enough to see it through. The star players were again up front - Mubarak averaged 7.48 with 15 goals and 11 assists while Nijs averaged 7.34 with 33 goals and 4 assists. At the back Mihart was exceptional in goal again, with 20 clean sheets and only 44 conceded in 47 games. At one point we went 7 competitive games without conceding at all! Emil Hartvig led the team with 13 assists from central midfield, continuing the creative tradition of the mezzala position in my formation. On the transfer front, the biggest signing was Marvin Eyama from Man Utd. A central defender who Utd had given up on, we picked him up for only £200k and he went and averaged 7.08 over 37 games. He's a perfect fit at wide centre back in my back 3. Peter Kiss was signed from Vojvodina to replace Jelert at right wing back and he was brilliant from the get go and was first choice pretty quickly. Tomoyuki Shakano was signed from Japan to replace Antonio Luis Rey after he was sold in January to RB Salzburg for £7m and again was first choice by the end of the season. He even came in at 35th on the NxGn award, my first entrant on there. Everyone else was signed for depth and didn't really progress beyond that. On the sales front, as mentioned Rey was sold to Salzburg. He rarely stole the show and £7m was too much to pass up. Timon Bonig was getting restless at being behind Nijs so when we got a decent bid I let him go (even though we lost £3m on the deal). Pablo Paz seemed to always be giving away penalties so I wasn't sad to see the back of him. Maressa was good but he was a backup at best. Edoardo Bove was signed as squad depth in the summer but wasn't happy with that role so after 5.5 months he was sold. We actually made a profit on transfers for the first time ever this season! Financially we're in the black at the moment thanks to £13m league prize money, but we spent most of the year in the red. Our stadium has been delayed by a year at this point, so I'm hoping we can finally get that over the line this summer. As soon as we got our prize money I got the board to upgrade the facilities again, they should both be done before Christmas.

I took the England job. I didn't feel a big connection to the French team and didn't think the squad was that great, so the chance to jump ship to my home country was too much to pass up.

Well now things are just getting silly - I'm still employed by France but there's a bidding war between nations for me!

France - Euro 2036 review We got drawn into a relatively easy group with Serbia, Romania and Croatia. We played Romania first and comfortably beat them 3-0. Next up was Croatia who took a while to break down, but we finally ran out 2-0 winners. In the final group game we'd already qualified so I completely rotated the team and we drew 0-0. Those results meant that we won the group and qualified for the knockout stages In the second round we drew Russia who we totally dominated but could only beat 1-0. That led to a quarter final against Italy which was very nerve wracking. In a very even game we scored at the end of the first half and kept Italy out for another 1-0 win. The semi finals put us up against Belgium and their insane attacking talent. We went 1-0 down to a Dailly goal, but managed to grab an equaliser soon after. Another very even game, it kind of petered out and we both limped to a penalty shootout. Our left back Germain unfortunately missed while Belgium were perfect and we went out. Belgium went on to dismantle Germany 3-0 in the final so it's another case of going out to the eventual winner. Belgium have now won Euro 2032, World Cup 2034 and Euro 2036, matching Spain's dominance from 2008-2012. Now for another 2 years of simming French games until the World Cup in 2038, which is held in South Africa!

Nijs doesn't have a cap because Belgium has some insane strikers ahead of him, two of whom are valued at over £250m! These are the three strikers they've got at the Euros currently and while Nijs is in their ballpark I reckon their reputation will be miles ahead of his. I still have the tycoon owner, but he seems more of a background kinda guy than one that's pumping endless money in. He only invested £2.5m last year, although I think most of his money is going on the new stadium at the moment! I was very happy with Mihart, there was a bit of a panic when Castellano decided he had to leave but Mihart was amazing and we actually conceded 14 less goals than the year before. Gueye is great, the advantage of being the France manager is that he was assured of a place in the squad for the tournament even if he's not quite at the first choice level yet! On the France job, I'll do a post-Euros update once I've got through that. I literally simmed every game with them before the Euros as I wasn't interested in friendlies or qualifiers against San Marino!

Obviously I'm going to reject this, but it's nice to know my reputation is high enough to be offered this on the back of just two 6th place finishes!

I feel better about losing to Rangers now after seeing this pop up in my inbox!

Cheers. A lot of my players have the dreaded Wnt icon next to them so I'll see if any offers come in for them. I reckon Nijs could go for at least £50m if I handled the negotiations correctly, but I'd much prefer to keep him if possible! The finances be damned, lol

Hyeres 83 FC - 2035/36 season review This was a rocky season that almost led to my being sacked in December and somehow ended with us qualifying for the Europa League again with another 6th place finish. We had an average start which picked up a bit of momentum in early September, only to smash into a wall through October, November and most of December. We went on an 8 game run where we had 1 draw and 7 losses and the worst thing is that all but one of the losses was by a solitary goal! We just couldn't consistently score, which was so frustrating to watch. Even more annoying was what happened when the new year hit - we completely turned it around and ended the season losing 2 of the last 17, with 12 wins. The board were very close to firing me in December, we had multiple chats about how I needed to turn it around or I'd be out the door, but every time my legendary status at the club seemed to give me a lot of leeway. Taking the next step is going to be difficult as there are a lot of players I've grown to love in this team over the past few years, but I know that some of them just aren't good enough to get near PSG (who won the title again, as they have for the past 15 years). Trying to find players who can push the club forward, at a reasonable price (I'm consistently in debt) is going to take a lot of luck. In our first ever foray into Europe, we had a relatively easy group with Utrecht, PAOK and Anderlecht and we started well and were on course to win the group but the last game came in the horrific run of form in the league. As a result I completely rotated the squad for the final game, which we lost to Utrecht and ended up second in the group. It kind of worked out though as we got Aris in the first knockout round (another Greek team from last season with Veroia) who we just about dispatched over two legs. The second knockout round saw us drawn against Rangers and I was quietly confident. However a 1-0 loss in the first leg put us behind the 8-ball and we could only muster a 1-1 draw in the second leg so our run was over. Still, a good showing for our first attempt (and some nice money in the bank) The star player for the year was Jo Nijs who racked up another 25 goals and even managed a team leading 12 assists. Mubarak had another great year alongside him, with 17 goals but only 3 assists. At the back, Chiekh Gueye was signed after Strasbourg were relegated and was a stud, and my first player in the French NT (who I'm managing in the Euros this summer). Emil Hartvig pulled the strings in midfield again, with 11 assists and 8 goals (including some cracking displays in the Europa League when it mattered). William Bianda was signed on a free as a 35 year old DC and was fantastic, sadly he's decided to retire after the season so I'll need a replacement for him. I sold Oscar Castellano in goal as he was desperate for Champions League action and Inter offered £9m (Inter promptly finished 3rd in the CL group and lost in the first knockout round of the Europa League, meaning we went further in Europe ). His replacement, Slobodan Mihart, was a machine who averaged 7.18 for the season! We also signed a few youngsters with an eye to the future: Yannick David, who I'm training to be my new CM on attack; Roy Straumbotn is my new WBR, replacing Jelert; Inaki Aguilera gives me two stud WBLs alongside Benali; Javier Alarcon is a good rotation with Reyes at DM;and Mejia is a great ST who was released by LA Galaxy and is used for rotation up front with Nijs and Mubarak. There was a general clearout through the season, getting rid of a lot of the deadwood that was just hanging around with no chance of playing. Tabakovic, Caculovic, Frick, Kremer, Riha, Ajbarah etc just aren't top end Ligue 1 players so I was happy to get their wages off the books for any fee. Financially we just can't quite get out of debt. To make things worse, our new stadium has now been delayed by 5 months apparently, so we won't even get the benefit of that until November. More of the same for next season, without an 8 game implosion. will hopefully put us up near the Champions League places. Fingers crossed, because I reckon some players (mainly Nijs) might want to move on if we don't get there soon.

Fair play, you're right that I may have remembered that from a previous version and it's all changed since then. I appreciate someone doing the research on this though, enjoying the work so far

From what I remember seeing elsewhere, on the preview day the range for CA/PA is set for each player (e.g. -10, -9, -8 etc) and then on the youth intake day the CA/PA is selected within that range.

Considering we're a 4th seed with no prior European experience, this draw turned our rather well for us I think! My rivalry with PAOK from last year is renewed again!