deltablue

Yep, that's left over from the old forum software where you couldn't upload images directly and needed to use hosting sites.

For a while now I've used a formation with a single winger, as a result of once arriving at a club with hardly any (and lots of central defenders) and having to cobble together a formation with what I had. It's by no means a 'super-tactic' but I have had a more consistent trend of success (well on a particular version a least) than I have had with more conventional formations.

You don't need to use hosting sites as you can upload images straight to posts.

The End And so, I think I am going to bring this career thread to an end, and probably my FMCU career as well. It's been coming for a while but I think things have reached the point where it truly is time. While I haven't reached what I feel will be the natural end game of this save (to win the Premier League, probably will with Everton), I have at least ticked off all 10 promotions from Level 11 to the Premier League. Who'd have thought that I'd only need to change three clubs to do it? It's always nice to leave things on a positive note anyway, along with my favourite montage song (even if I can't really provide images to go along with it).

May 2040 The job was done easily enough, with a general trend of widening the gap to the team in 3rd (Wycombe at first, then Middlesbrough). It did look like there was a teensy little wobble in March which allowed Wolves to catch up to us in the race for 1st (which I still wasn't caring about) but the promotion safety margin seemed comfortable enough. We pretty much put one foot in the Premier League after beating Middlesbrough, opening up a 15-point gap with just 6 games to go, though it still took a few games to officially confirm it. As Wolves had a poor end to the season it only took one more game to secure top spot. It did feel a bit of a shame to finish the season with defeat at home to Huddersfield (which I thought would be a comfortable win) but thankfully that really didn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things aside from denying Eastham the chance to be at least joint-top scorer, 36 league goals was still 2 behind a Wolves forward, though he was a full 10 goals ahead of everyone else. We actually scored one goal fewer than last season, though that was still enough to be joint-second in the scoring charts. It was having comfortably the best defence in the league (despite a few bad days like the embarrassing) 4-0 defeat against QPR) that made the difference, as well as just having more consistency across the board. Lots of little changes from last season combined to finally help this team come together. It was kind of fitting that Everton are finally back in the Premier League after a gap of exactly 20 years. With loan repayments being our biggest expenditure, we're finally rid of the 300kpm CVA repayments and we have just one more year of 131kpm repayments before we're just left left with a 99kpm repayment that's almost nothing, especially for a Premier League team. Eliminating the loan repayments alone would only have reduced our losses so much and as we reached £15m in the red after the season finished, it's fair to say that it was a timely promotion from a financial perspective! However with budgets remaining low for now (the initial transfer budget was around £7m with a wage budget of just 230kpw) the next couple of seasons at least should see big profits and financial stability at last. Star Player: This really has to be shared, with Eastham and Pergolini being split by just 0.01 (and they were in fact exactly level for average rating going into the final match of the season). Eastham racked up 30 league goals in just 33 games (missing a few later matches due to injuries) and as mentioned above 36 still wasn't enough to be top scorer. He was a player I only just managed to sign thanks to taking the minor financial hit of releasing multiple players to free up enough wage budget, but he was worth it. In almost 6 seasons he's racked up 178 goals and 40 assists in 262 matches, and without him we'd have ended up in League 1, not the Premier League. As amazing as it seems now, Pergolini was a player I actually wasn't sure about signing, he just seemed like a low risk free agent who might end up being decent. He at least made a good impression from the start but he was more a versatile rotation option until I decided that to make him more of an established first-choice player this season, one of the various decisions that helped it all come together. Getting into double figures for both goals and assists for a season is usually something worthy of recognition, let alone getting 21 and 12 respectively to make him the perfect foil for Eastham. Squad Stats

Dec 2039 Now this is more like the team I was hoping to see over the past couple of seasons. Despite winning the opening game (for the first time as Everton manager), the first handful of games were a bit of an inconsistent mess that made it seem like we were in for yet another season of muddling through and just about snatching a play-off place at best. However September saw the team step up a gear and start a run of 5 wins and a draw in 6 matches, suddenly putting us potentially as automatic promotion contenders. October and early November saw us stumble a little with some tough games, but we still remained in the top 2 pretty much the entire time, even spending a bit of time in 1st. We managed to recover and get back into good form after that, starting to put a bit of daylight between ourselves and Wycombe in 3rd. We're technically in a battle for top spot with Wolves but really it's the gap to 3rd that I keep thinking about, as well as the real possibility that we're going to do it this time. It's wonderful to find some consistency at last, with the young Irish winger Thompson being the only who has been disappointing on more than a very occasional basis. That consistency was particularly clear with the defence as we've conceded the fewest goals in the league, while still not being too shabby up front, thanks not just to Eastham but Pergolini as well. Making the latter the firm first-choice partner up front for the former turned out to be an example of one of the little changes I decided to make that has really worked out. The Italian all-rounder has the highest average rating in the team so far, thanks to 11 goals and 9 assists, sometimes stepping up when Eastham was having a sub-par game. As DB predicted above, Tosi and Goethals have slotted into their roles well (despite shaky starts), as did Besic until an injury (Kourkoutis pretty much taking over his place afterwards), while the previously inconsistent Bulgarian defender Stanchev (who was within a whisker of being sold in the summer) has been repaying the faith as part of the first-choice defensive line-up. Last season gave me a lot to think about in terms of how to try and fix things (not just what we needed in terms of signings but selection choices among the existing squad) and it's amazing to see how right I was.

You turned out to be psychic

Erm, he's on holiday and won't be back for another week.

I'll ask around Yep I'm about 12 miles north-ish of there.

That's really close to me!

Summer 2039 The major headline was always going to be the loss of our defensive rock Castelo. He has been amazing for four seasons and I considered just letting him leave on a free after keeping him a year longer but that would have been a broken promise and we needed our annual sale. Unfortunately to keep his wages as an acceptable level I had to give him a £5m release clause, which is a shame as otherwise I had hoped to get around double that for him. Speaking of clauses, our former winger Stokkolm went to Sporting for almost £20m, meaning that I was kicking myself for concentrating in the fee instead of putting in a % of profit from next transfer clause as that would have been worth quite a bit, instead of getting around 200k as a 1% solidarity payment. Castelo ended up being our only departure, at least among players who had actually played for us since the only other sale was for one of the 'homegrown' signings from a couple of years ago who turned out to be redundant. Knowing that Castelo was leaving so far in advance meant that I could plan to replace him, and I jumped on the Belgian defender Goethals to secure a move at the end of his contract. Since we had plenty of transfer budget at the time, I also saw a couple of players who caught my eye as 'investment signings'. Basic had a decent enough season on the wing last season but he's really not a winger attribute-wise, which is why I felt we needed Thompson , while Knudsen was more speculative. Once the window opened properly I needed to get a proper right back, having failed to get a young player from Juventus at the same time as I made the Goethals deal. The Tosi signing was a matter of luck, as I was just resigning myself to making another loan deal when I saw that he had an asking price that was a fraction of what I thought it would be (his scout report being out of date). I think he's the most expensive signing I've made so far but there isn't much available on the free market right now I have accepted that I have to spend (within reason when I have to now. He at least brings much-needed pace to the position as well as being a bit better going forward. While I was looking for a right back I came across Nieminen, who didn't have the pace to be my solution in that position but aside from how promising he looked he is incredibly versatile position wise, being able to play anywhere in defence, defensive midfield and regular midfield positions. Speaking of midfield, since I am still looking for improvement in that area and found the veteran Swedish midfielder Besic. His contract was actually expiring but I thought it was worth paying a small sum to get him now. I really wanted to make one more young signing but we were pretty much out of transfer budget and while there were a few players I considered selling, I didn't want to do anything reckless just for the sake of one more player when we had invested enough in that direction already. One of the players I had to miss out on was another young Finnish player, which would have made it 3 at the club. Finland does seem like a good place to find young players right now! I felt this was a good summer of investment. By the end of last season I had a few ideas about what I could do to fine-tune this team a little more, not just in terms of signings but also a couple of players to potentially use more. While I spent a lot more in the past, I felt I spent well and got all the players I felt I needed to (with a couple extra). Hopefully 6 signings in one year won't be too much and we cam push on to at least make the playoffs less of a tough fight than in the past couple of years, and maybe even make more of a push for the top 2 (though that's less likely). Besic Goethals Knudsen Niemenen Thompson Tosi

They're still around, just hidden. On the old forum software we used to call it 'soft deletion', which was the standard practice, 'proper' deletion only occurred in rare circumstances like spam. On this software it's specifically labelled as hiding a post or a thread, and anything that's hidden can be unhidden even of only mods can still see them and do that.

Well I feel the quality is there but the consistency really isn't. In the past we just weren't doing it up front but now that's working a lot better, it's the defence that's throwing points away. The team is pretty much as good as it's realistically going to be at this level, especially with how careful I feel I have to be financially, with paying 10kpw for a player and even anywhere near 500k for transfer fee having to be exceptional. I think we were at least Plymouth's equal on paper and close enough to pretty much any team in the division, depending on who comes down from the Premier League. Like with the Conference and League 2 with Grimsby, the best thing to do is just to be patient, find small ways to improve things where I can and eventually it'll work out.

Playoffs 2039 Our final day win over Millwall took us up into 5th and a playoff semi-final with Plymouth, who seemed beatable. We took the lead early on in the home leg thanks to Pergolini, one of those goals where someone pretty much keeps hold of the ball with only a small amount of movement in various directions before finally letting off an incredible shot. We weren't super convincing but we seemed solid enough throughout the team, however a stoppage time penalty allowed them to equalise and deny us a lead to take into the away leg. The second leg saw us needing to keep it tight and cautious, and we seemed to do a good job of it. Eastham had been unconvincing at best in out playoff matches so far but he finally woke up to give us the lead in the second half, and I found myself imagining that we could just about do it after all. Unfortunately the lead didn't last long, before we conceded again to end our promotion hopes. Sometimes getting promoted through the playoffs can be most satisfying when you're struggling to look convincing for most of the season and otherwise just scrape through, but this was not to be one of those times. In truth we probably weren't really good enough at any point in the season to say that we deserved to go up, while Plymouth arguably deserved to win on balance. We were decent enough up front, though we could have done more and in the end the defence threw it all away as an accurate summary of our season as a whole. Like Rotherham before them, it was Plymouth who ended up getting promoted, beating Swansea 3-0 in the final.

May 2039 I am not sure I've done a season in just 2 updates before, especially not one as long as this! Unfortunately we failed to push on as hoped, which is especially frustrating given we counted Plymouth and Leicester (for the second time) among the teams we did managed to beat. The division was incredibly open this season, with almost every team hitting double-figures for wins, draws and defeats and it wouldn't have taken a massive amount of extra effort or luck to at least get close to automatic promotion. It was pretty much the same as it's been for a while, getting into the playoff places but not being able to do much more than hang on by a narrow margin. Thankfully the last 3 games of the season were comfortable enough to rack up three wins for only the second time this season, which was also only the 4th time we got back to back wins. We just didn't look like promotion challengers so it was a relief to at least hit my personal minimum expectation of making the playoffs. At least we weren't Hull, who probably racked up all sorts of records in a season where they failed to wipe out a 10-point deduction! Staveley Miners Welfare would have been in the playoffs if it wasn't for their own. It was clear that goals alone weren't enough this year. Aside from division winners Charlton Athletic (just), the only two teams to outscore us failed to even make the playoffs, Brighton had a particularly eventful time at both ends of the pitch, only narrowly missing out to Forest as the league's top scorers while conceding more than anyone other than 2 the relegated teams. Star Player: Castelo once again, capping a brilliant 4 years at the club after being a free signing. However last autumn he wanted a move to a bigger club (something that I was amazed took that long from any player) and with one year left on his contract I'll probably have to grant his wish. Squad Stats

I actually made Ramsdale first choice in a recent FM22 save (starting with England).

Decent start in the Premier League.

Hopefully you can keep up the promotion challenge.

That's a great conference league run.

They're in League 2 in my save

That's convenient in case of injuries.

Oh I am sure it happens. Here is the current wage bill table... We're at about 115kpw, which seems reasonable and sensible at this level. You can see just how much the tycoon teams are spending, which means bit trouble for Staveley Miners Welfare with no more financial backing. They're paying their captain 63kpw, while for me 10kpw is exceptional and only granted to the most important players! You can also see how badly Hull have been squeezed financially.

Dec 2038 Whoops! I put this save to one side for a while and I thought I had gotten the screenshots for a delayed update (corresponding to the end of September in-game) but it turns out so instead of two smaller updates, here is one big one! The start to the season was very disappointing, and I have yet to win my opening game of the season at Everton. By this point, being in the playoff places is my bare minimum expectation but we spent the first couple of months of the season with inconsistent form leaving us roughly halfway down the table. Unlike previous seasons, it's the defence that has been a bigger liability than an attack that's finally starting to click on a (mostly) consistent basis, leading to far more goals at both ends. If we could get both performing well at once, then we'd get promotion comfortably. I felt we could do with another defender so after September saw the arrival of the free agent Iaconi. October saw things improve. We grabbed a late point in a tough game at Charlton, then got good wins (our first back to back league wins of the season in fact) over Leicester and Hull, climbing up the table and into serious playoff contention at last. We then stumbled against Hartlepool when a win would have seen us go into the top 6 and be just 3 points off top, followed by a defeat to Staveley Miner's Welfare where we had 2 goals disallowed and a player sent off in the first 10 minutes! We had to wait until beating Ipswich to taste the top 6, starting a run of 13 points from 5 matches to give us the best form of the season so far. The lead-up to the festive period was not a happy one as we lost in what should have been comfortable home games against both Coventry and Middlesbrough, as part of how we could get results against the toughest sides in the league but not the weaker ones on enough on a consistent basis. The Christmas period itself saw rather better news, starting with a points deduction for Staveley Miner's Welfare that promoted us back to 6th before we even played Chesterfield (we were otherwise 2 points off in 7th), taking a potential rival out of the picture. Ending the year with two league wins in a row (for only the third time this season) put us into 5th with a 4-point margin, and we were still just 6 points off top despite the relative inconsistent mess of a season so far. No one is running away with it this year, either a single team or a small group of teams (and you can get both together) battling for the top 2 and already leaving the play-offs as the best anyone else could realistically hope for at this stage. It makes for a very open battle at the top where a lot of teams (ourselves included) are still in with a decent chance of automatic promotion with a good enough run of form. The party is very much over for Staveley Miner's Welfare. They were one of our biggest play-off rivals until their points deduction. Looking through their history, they still have their tycoon owner but he withdrew funding (which I didn't realise was a thing) at the start of last season. They did build a new stadium of about 27k capacity which should help consolidate at a higher level then they otherwise would but having the second highest wage bill in the league (only behind fellow tycoon team Oldham, and over 6 times our wage bill) is clearly starting to bite. It's probably not much fun at Hull either, in administration for the second time I've seen while at Everton (with Leicester having also done so twice) and having to operate such a low wage bill that even without their points deduction they'd be half-doomed already. This is why I avoided the bigger and richer Championship clubs (as Hull were up to this point) and decided to take the slow and more sustainable path with Everton. I saw their wage bills as a ticking time bomb if they failed to quickly get back to the Premier League every time.

Summer 2038 This was always going to be a quieter year after last summer's activity. A handful of players were set to leave, which needed to happen after the board slashed the wage budget in the middle of last season to leave us massively over. It was a relief to get rid of a few players at last though a few choices like Shilton were harder to make. I anticipated having to make a big sale as well, so it was a nice surprise that I was able to make it Forte just a year after getting him for nothing as player who lost out among our glut of playmakers and wingers, helped by the fact that unlike the others he wasn't homegrown. Paton was a deal I made in January (thankfully just before the budget was cut), not someone we needed position-wise but getting someone of his potential for nothing was an opportunity I didn't miss. While I was trying to sort out a right-back (the one new signing we needed to make) the DoF went ahead and essentially got this year's 'investment signing' for me, and incredible Finnish defender who had already popped up on my radar, though not when I was able to make an offer. Free agents clearly weren't cutting it anymore (with rare exceptions like Castelo) and I wasn't sure how much I was willing to spend, so I made the incredibly rare move of initiating a loan deal for Stathopoulos as a good player who would at least do for this season. I would also like to finally showcase Skrzypczak, a player I picked up on a free after the start or last season who I keep forgetting to post about. He looked like an amazing young winger who might even give me the opportunity to sell Eastham if we really needed the money, but aside from an assist, his few appearances so far have been woeful. However he has plenty of time to pick things up and be the player I hoped I would eventually get. After our playoff appearance last year my eyes are now firmly on fighting for promotion. A relatively quiet summer should allow us to improve more with a gelled squad and I feel like we can get promoted eventually. It's just a matter of how long it takes and how much improvement we still have left, though we don't need much. Johnson Paton Skrzypczak Stathopoulos