Britrock
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Posts posted by Britrock
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Hyeres 83 FC - 2034/35 season review
This season started so slowly that I was initially worried about relegation after 8 games without a win. Luckily we then hit a purple patch and won 7 of the next 9 which set us up for the second half of the season. A 9-1 humiliation at PSG was the lowpoint, but a few weeks after we started on a 6 game winning run. A couple of defeats (including a 3-2 loss to Monaco with the most insane 94th minute goal to seal the defeat) left our European hopes finely in the balance, but we recovered to go unbeaten over the last 6 games with 5 wins and finished 6th to skip the Europa Conference League and go straight into the Europa League! I had a lot of success in the ECL last year in Greece (one victory and 3 or 4 losing finalists) but it's nice to go straight into the bigger brother of the two.
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The squad will need a bit of beefing up to cope with the extra games, and the board have given me ~£8m to achieve that. We weren't too busy in the summer, and in fact quite a few of the players we did buy didn't pan out. Antonio Luis Rey came in to be our new playmaker and was average at best, and other than that we signed mostly squad depth or youngsters. Timon Bonig was an impulse purchase and probably a stupid way to blow £10.5m and set a new transfer record and spent most of the season on the bench behind Nijs and Mubarak but performed well when called upon. He'll be needed more next year with Europe on the schedule. On deadline day I suddenly realised I needed some depth as I had a few players out on extended international duty at AFCON and the Asian Cup so I brought in a few guys to provide better cover than what we had. They did the job required to perfection.
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Top performer was Mubarak up front with 13 goals, 4 assists and a mind-bending 7.59 avg rating. He's so good, a 6'4'' athletic freak who's dominant in the air, good with the ball at his feet as well and so consistent. Top scorer was Nijs, who only scored 17 this year but considering it took until the 10th game of the year for him to score, 17 in 24 is a pretty good return! Elias Jelert led the team with 10 assists from right wing back with Nijs and Hartvig both contributing 8 assists (Hartvig also had 9 goals, mostly penalties). At the back Pablo Paz had a great average rating but gave away 3 or 4 penalties through dumb tackles so he's definitely on my watch list. Castellano was solid as always in goal, but is getting a bit nervous about appearing for Spain. He wanted us to win the Coupe de France to help increase the club's reputation (we lost in the quarters to Marseille) but I'm hoping that qualifying for the Europa League will satisfy him. Inter are interested though so I'm a little nervous, especially as he's club captain...
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Financially things look a little ropey - the money seems to have dried up a little from our owner and he's not as interested in pumping in as much cash now that all our facilities are better. We're over £9m in debt, although we are building a new stadium so maybe it's a bit unfair to criticise him too much. One more season and we'll get to move in to it, hopefully we'll have expanded the fan base enough by that point to fill it regularly, we seem to have capped out just below 10k avg attendance. Here's hoping a good Europa League run will boost our reputation enough to get more supporters onboard as well as getting more prize money in!
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Well this was unexpected, but they actually offered me (an Englishman!) the job, so it seemed rude to turn them down. Looks like I'm the first ever non-Frenchman to manage the French national team! They went out to England in the semis of the previous world cup so they still have a good team. I checked the rules in the first post which said international management was allowed so hope this is ok.
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Hyeres 83 FC - 2033/34 season review
This season took forever to play, mostly because the first half of the season turned into a huge slog, but the second half was fantastic fun. We started the season fairly well, in fact we were top after the first game, but then October hit and we forgot how to score. Over the next 9 games we would score only 5 goals. Our defence kept us in all of those games (only conceding 10 goals) but we didn't win any of them and only picked up 4 points. Then in January we signed Jo Nijs for a club record £5m and Youssef Benali to play left wing back for £1.1m and started to fly. From January to the end of the season we only lost twice in the league, to Marseille and PSG. Among others we beat Lyon, Nice, Rennes (5-2), Lens (5-0) and Monaco. We played some sensational football at times and my commitment to 352 finally paid off. We ended the season in 8th, only 6 points off Europe. Somehow we ended the season with two 1-1 draws against the bottom two teams, which could have put us up to 7th if we'd won both of them.
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On the transfer front it was more evolution than revolution. The squad I'd built to win Ligue 2 was actually rated mid-table quality in the season preview so I didn't need to go crazy overhauling everything. As a result the only guys to come in were Pablo Paz, an aerially dominant DC from Argentina and Emil Hartvig, a central midfield addition. Paz was an absolute stud from day one, while Hartvig took a while to warm up but by the end of the year was playing some great stuff. As mentioned earlier, in January we signed a couple more reinforcements in Nijs and Benali and Diarrassouba is one for the future.
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The best performing players across the season were Nijs, who banged in 14 goals in his 17 league appearances; Mubarak, who chipped in with 12 goals and 11 assists; Lennart Rogild, who took a while to get going but by the end of the season had 6 goals and 10 assists; and Paz, with 3 goals but dominant defensively. Shout out to Castellano in goal who kept 10 clean sheets and only conceded 37 goals all year and is club captain.
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Obviously the aim for next season is to get in to some form of European competition. With a better start to the season I see no reason why we can't make up those few points. Also, as soon as I posted PSG's unbeaten run, they promptly went and lost 2-1 to Lyon! Still, they won the league by 16 points so I think they're a longer term project to overcome. The board are still allowing us to upgrade our facilities and, as noted above, building a nice big stadium for the future. Finances were a bit sketchy at times, as we got down to -£8.5m at one point, but the board kept pumping in money to keep us afloat.
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Originally this was planned to only be a 15,000 seater stadium so it's nice to see the board reacting to my current success (end of season review coming soon) and expanding it to be 25,000+. Just a shame I'll have to wait another two seasons for it to be built.
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I knew PSG were dominant, but I didn't quite realise how dominant they'd become. They haven't lost a league game in nearly 3 seasons (34 games in Ligue 1). It's the 19th April 2034 and they last lost a league game on the 15th August 2031!
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15 hours ago, Mahzun_Savas said:
I will be taking charge of Sporting Club Toulon in the French National League. This club is based in Toulon in the south of France, a major port on the Mediterranean.
The squad does not look too bad with a number of players rated as good National league players.
Welcome to France. PSG are as dominant as you'd think - 12 years in to my save and they're the only team to win Ligue 1. They're currently unbeaten after 29 games of this season too (although I've out played them in both our games). Hopefully you get through the lower leagues quicker than I did!
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9 hours ago, aldojags said:
Yeah he has everything I want in a striker - fast, strong, good in the air and a great finisher. January can't come around soon enough!
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Work and life has been manic recently so my Hyeres save has been on the backburner, but I finally played PSG for the first time and we more than held our own. In fact we outplayed them for large parts of the game and very nearly beat them, succumbing to a heartbreaking 92nd minute goal. PSG are currently top with 12 wins and 1 draw from the first 13 games. We're in 12th, 4 points above the relegation places. We can't score a goal to save our lives at the moment (only 3 in our last 5 games) but hopefully that will be fixed come January when Jo NIjs is joining us from Oostende
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I've had two new stadiums built in my save so far so it is possible. I got promoted to Ligue 2 and got a new 8000 stadium, but after promotion to Ligue 1 four years later (and a tycoon takeover) they're building me a new 15000 stadium so I don't have to use someone else's (15000 minimum limit in Ligue 1)
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This is something I've never seen before in FM - I asked for a new affiliate club and the board let me choose my own one from a huge list! I ended up going with CSKA Sofia from Bulgaria as they seemed to have the best facilities from the teams I was given. Super cool feature for those of us who get far enough with our teams!
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17 minutes ago, aldojags said:
fantastic @Britrocksome great signings there and ridiculous end of the season with that run you were on!
Can't wait to see how u get on with a tycoon behind u, im jealous!
Cheers. A lot of them were unhappy players on the transfer list for one reason or another, so it really helped to keep the fees down. Almost no one disappointed as well, which is unheard of!
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Well, if the board won't expand the stadium why not ask them to build you a new one instead? We only moved in to the current one 4 years ago but sure, why not?
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Hyeres 83 FC - 2032/33 season review
After the tycoon takeover I set about completely rebuilding the squad over the summer and brought in 9 new starters. Everyone but the two starting DCs were replaced and we rolled into the season looking to play our 41212 system. Defensively we were superb, barely conceding any goals, but we just couldn't score - at one point our actual goals was 4 or 5 behind our xG total. This was leading to a lot of draws or lucky 1-0 wins, so I set about trying to find a solution. My first change was pushing the DM up into midfield to play a 4312, which worked for a few games but still wasn't producing many goals. Eventually I went back to my 352 that won the National a few years before in such dominant fashion. It seems to have the right mix of defensive stability and offensive output as in the last 16 games that we played it we won 14, drew 1 and lost 1. This obviously lead us to the Ligue 2 title and promotion to Ligue 1. Finally!
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All it took was almost £11m in new signings to get me an entirely new squad! Oscar Castellano was a stud in goal, setting a Ligue 2 record for the most clean sheets in a season and leading our league best defence, conceding a paltry 22 goals in 38 games. Both of our wing backs created tonnes of chances, with Jelert getting the second most MotM awards in the league. Olafsson wasn't quite as good but was still a very solid pickup at left back. Lennart Rogild was the reason we started the season so well, banging in a lot of goals early in the season when we were struggling to score. He couldn't quite keep that pace up through the season but still led the team with 15 assists. Abdulaziz Mubarak was signed in January as a backup AMC but ended up playing up front and was absolutely lethal. At 6'4'' with 18 jumping he was unstoppable in the air and scored so many headers. Finally Sven Caculovic was the long term replacement for Ibrahima Sow up front. He didn't light the league on fire as I hoped but was still top scorer with 16 goals (he was signed before the league year ticked over so he isn't on the history page)
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Financially we took a huge loss of £38m, but we've still got a potential transfer budget of £9.5m at the moment. Training facilities are on their 3rd upgrade in a year, while the youth facilities got two upgrades. Annoyingly we've got to play in someone else's stadium next year as the limit is 15000 in Ligue 1 and our stadium is only 8000. The board won't expand it as we're only getting ~3500 fans a game so it's a season of travel for us until more people show up.
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1 hour ago, aldojags said:
Looking forward to seeing that Ligue 1 budget!
whats club vision this year, happy for just survival or they wanting more if giving beefy budget?
Still got a couple of games to go before the season is over, at the moment the minimum budget is about £10m but I'm expecting/hoping for that to be much larger once it's officially announced
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All it took was the best part of £11m, tripling my wage budget and an entirely new playing squad but we won Ligue 2 to finally make it to Ligue 1 after 11 seasons. Now all we need to do is topple PSG
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Hyeres 83 FC - 2031/32 season review
The one with the tycoon takeover!
A good season where we finished 7th, but were still 11 points off of the playoffs. We transitioned from the 352 that I've been playing for years to a 41212 diamond after we went on a 6 game run without a win through November. After the change we immediately went on an 8 game unbeaten run, winning 7 and only conceding 3, before 4 more games without a win. We finished the season only losing one of the last 8 so I think I'm happy going into next season with this formation. As part of the change, I also moved away from the counter attacking setup that I'd used to survive the past two seasons. I figured that my team was now competent enough to be able to keep possession and it seems to have been borne out by the results.
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Standout performers this season were Wesley Jansen, on loan from Go Ahead Eagles in the Netherlands. Sadly he signed for Cadiz for next season on a Bosman so I won't have him moving forwards. He's physically dominant so it would have been nice to have him around but he signed before the takeover so I never had a chance. Abdourahim Aïdara was someone we had on loan from Lens a few years back but we signed on a cheap deal permanently. Ibrahima Sow was back on goalscoring form again after a slow season last year, banging in 23 goals to bring his career totals to 87 in 150 games. He's been fantastic but I think his time at the club may now be up as he's in his early 30s. Idris Odutayo was great as always at left back and Lewis Vervaeke was a January signing who blew a hole in our wage budget but was totally worth it.
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Now, the important part. Mahmoud Saeed completed his takeover of the club at the end of March and has pumped so much money into our coffers. He immediately put £38m into the bank balance and allowed us to expand our scouting network to worldwide, improve our junior coaching, expand our youth recruitment, improve our training and youth facilities, hire two new scouts, two new coaches and a physio, allowed me to finally get my first coaching badge and gave me £10m to spend. For next season that transfer budget has expanded to £25m with £145k wage budget, although I've moved more of that into wages. Needless to say I've been busy trying to improve the squad and I've already got 9 transfers lined up for next season! Mahmoud seems like a decent guy as well, he only wants mid-table next season, he's not pushing for immediate promotion which I was worried about.
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4 hours ago, _JHTB_ said:
To be fair, you are still in the second tier so even with the new riches you still have challenges ahead of you, just less constraints over money. I think in my save there are about 6 teams in the premier league who have tycoons currently so you'd still have plenty teams to be competing with for signings anyway
I'm under no illusions that winning things is going to be easy, it's just that every annoyance around the managing the club has been removed. Even if I get promoted I've still got the PSG juggernaut in Ligue 1 to get past (they've won every title since the save started) but things like this should help!
That's tripled my wage budget and I have no idea how to spend £25m in Ligue 2!
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13 minutes ago, aldojags said:
Aw this is going to be fun!!
My first reaction is that it's like playing on FM on easy mode! After 10 seasons of struggling to get anything approved and constantly being in debt, now the board will agree to anything! I can already scout the entire world (up from mainland Europe), I've got £10m to spend, they're improving the training and youth facilities, junior coaching, youth recruitment, everything, it's mad. I can't wait until the summer transfer window!
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Holy moly, it actually happened!
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Please, please, please, please, please!
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Just had an 8 game unbeaten run where I conceded 3 goals in total, won 7 games and beat the team in first. Then I lost 3-0 to the team in 20th and lost three players to injury because FM hates me.
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Ambre, you better not just be taunting me here...!
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Please, please, please, please, please!
National Team management - Am I going to have to buy the in-game editor to get staff?
in Football Manager General Discussion
Posted
I took over as France manager recently and the first guy I offered the assistant manager job to accepted the role so it's not broken for everyone...