[The Ultimate Football Manager Challenge]

Well, after stepping away from the challenge for a while and working on a Tottenham career, among others, decided to just start from scratch rather than pick up with a campaign where I had lost some interest.

Blues Traveler

Ultimate FM Challenge

 

I've applied to all available openings, both club teams and international. Casting a wide net in hopes of ending up with a couple of options to begin the campaign.

Will be back soon with an update on where we're moving to begin the campaign!

[The Ultimate Football Manager Challenge]

Blues Traveler

Season 3 (2022/23)

FK Podbrezova (Slovak First Division)

Been a little bit since my last update, when I took over SK Odeva Lipany in the Slovak Second Divison and took a team projected for relegation to a mid-table finish.

We continued the reconstruction of the roster, taking full advantage of the league rules allowing a maximum of five foreign players on the field at once. Our first-team lineup included two players from Brazil (Rafinha and Wictor Dias), one from Belarus - where I still had scouting connections from my first job in charge of Sputnik Rechitsa (Alexey Mosichev), one from Nigeria (Bankole Olawale Adekuoroye) and one from the United States (Danny Beason). My backup striker, Enzo Arevalo (6 goals in 10 league appearances), was also from Spain.

We started out hot, on the cusp of the top two (promotion), though we eventually settled into mid-table ahead of the three-month winter break in Slovakia. The highlight, though, was a 2-0 upset over top division Zilina in the Slovak FA Cup. Unfortunately, we met our match against Ruzomberok, another top division side, in the following round.

 

We stood at 8-2-8 through 18 matches, and promotion looked like a longshot.

BUT: Expectations were so low that clubs in Slovakia took notice. First, Zilina, sitting seventh in the First Division, offered an interview after sacking their manager. They didn't hire me -- instead, hiring the coach of Podbrezova from the top division.

Podbrezova, meanwhile, was also impressed enough by our efforts at Lipany...

 

So here we are. It's a relegation battle to finish out this season, but the team is in decent form. Excited to be in the top division in a European country and hope we get enough support from the board to make a real run - both in the league and domestic cup - in 2023/24.

 

[The Ultimate Football Manager Challenge]

Blues Traveler

2021/22

SK Odeva Lipany

Been a while since I jumped back into this as I got busy with other things (and wanted to start a Spurs save after the full game released). But, to update:

I began this save by using a randomizer to select my playable countries. That led me to beginning in Belarus with Sputnik Rechitsa, in the second tier. I took over a team and barely avoided relegation, but it wasn't enough to please those in charge - sacked from my first job! It turned out to be all right, I waited a few months and landed a new gig in the Slovak Second Division with SK Odeva Lipany - newly promoted from the Slovak Lower Division. We quickly rebuilt the roster, including adding some scouted players from Spain, Brazil and the U.S., and we've been highly competitive.

Picked to finish 11th, we're in fifth with five matches to play. It might not be enough to secure promotion this season (top two), but we've found a style of play that seems to work and I've got dreams of moving up in year two.

 

The Lipany board has been happy enough to continue funding coaching licenses for me, so that's a huge plus here as well. Onward!

[The Ultimate Football Manager Challenge]

13 minutes ago, _JHTB_ said:

Think it is completely because of weather that it is like that looks just like it's got a spattering of snow and then the blue lines because of the snow. So I'm fairly sure it's intended and not a bug there, don't think pitch condition is visible from looking at the match engine, but again could be that also I suppose.

You were correct. First league match was much better (though the result was not!). We shall continue.

[The Ultimate Football Manager Challenge]

Blues Traveler

Sputnik Rechitsa (2021)

Getting ready to start my first full season as a manager. Unfortunately, I'm worried I'm going to have to start from the beginning. My save might have picked up a bug transitioning from the beta version to the full game. See the field, from one of my friendlies:

Pretty sure this is a big. But I'm not positive? Because I received this inquiry before my league opener. Is it just my home pitch is in awful, awful shape, to the point that the ground is discolored?

Appreciate the question, Maxim, but we'll pass on answering for now.

Lastly, the season preview. The experts say our talent gives us a chance to earn promotion. I hope that also means we've got a chance to make some noise in the cup.

Also: How often have you seen a club with *1-91* odds to win a league? Getting points vs. Rukh Brest will be quite the accomplishment, apparently.

[The Ultimate Football Manager Challenge]

3 hours ago, vikeologist said:

I apologise for being a bad thread host and not constantly responding to all your progress. 

All I can say is that after 6 years, you start to feel like you're repeating yourself. 

However, while FM21 is downloading (the importance of which is somewhat lessened by my still on the FM20 challenge)...

@Siepe1990 Congrats on the Copa. You know I'm not sure I've ever had a win on this challenge to rival that. Frankly I tend to rarely deviate from low hanging fruit, and hen I did in this challenge (with Switzerland) I left dodge once I realised how rubbish they were. (But they were really bad). I think I won the Confederations Cup with Mexico once. 

I certainly shut up shop from time to time once 1-0 up with a cup I absolutely need to win. 

@fromcoystocottbus Kind of makes me want to manage in Belarus. (I never have), but they only have 1 cup, so it won't be this challenge. Nothing worse than being crippled by league restrictions in an unfamiliar league, and not being able to do anything about it until the next transfer window, 

At my new club, I had a choice in a vital cup fixture. Play my best goalkeeper (who is foreign) and have absolutely no cover on the subs bench in the event of injury, or play safe with my backup goalie who is almost as good, but a little lacking match fitness. Either way, I cannot put out a full subs bench. (I mean I could have an extra 16 year old goalie, but I think by that point I'd be doomed).

It worked out ok though for that fixture. My run of what I acknowledge much look like an unlikely run of success is still ongoing. I promise I'm not cheating in order to complete the challenge. I'd rather not complete it than cheat, although obviously I'm hoping that my self-defined 'clean' attempt at the challenge will soon be at an end. 

@libbyshuss Good luck with Nigeria. I often seem to have problems with the ACON, but i don't know why. Given that my (essentially downloaded) tactics should give me the edge over similar quality teams, it should be easy. Of course I've only failed once in this save, but believe me. I have lost a lot of ACONs. I tjink it was 7 or 8 in a row, but that's not the challenge record.

@lukefox44 So I think I've missed something in your previous updates, (About to reveal how little I carefully study updates). The 1 year contract is a league requirement in South Africa? I thought that people were just saying that individual (presumably those of humble means) or ambitious players were insisting on it. 

Anyway, you're in my old home of Dalian now. Do you know, I could never find their ground. Nobody in the city seemed entirely sure where exactly it was. Nobody had ever actually been to a game there. Honestly, the stadium should have been findable. I mean, it's a stadium. It's not like trying to find a tiny little shed. It's a huge stadium, but no. Simply couldn't find it. I wouldn't overstate how hard I tried. I did watch Chinese football on TV, and believe me, that can really sap the enthusiasm. The only enjoyable Chinese football is on FM.

@MShing Congrats on your success in S Africa. Always a relief to get that CL out of the way.

@danielclouston1 Welcome to the challenge. Did you get a job?

@dannyh_22  Sucks to stay for a cup you don't win. Sucks to fall too far behind on your cups, though I think I'm demonstrating how easy it is to swoop in for cups. Well, I've done it once. Still in the middle of the second swoop. Hopefully good news soon.

 

The good news here is the contract situations made it fairly simple to build around the league restrictions after finishing that partial season. That, plus my board nearly doubled my payroll budget in the offseason (not that there's a lot of talent interested in playing in the Belarus First League, but we were able to bring in some young players with potential/a couple players with a track record of success at this level). 

I saved right before starting preseason camp and we're predicted to finish third (which would be a playoff promotion spot)! Not a bad turnaround, talent-wise, for a team that finished near relegation. Excited to start this season.

[The Ultimate Football Manager Challenge]

Blues Traveler

Sputnik Rechitsa 2020

For my first role, I relocated from the U.S. to Belarus to take over a team picked to finish third in the Belarus First League, but one on an 11-match winless streak in league play.

Before taking over: 2-5-9 (11 points in 16 matches)

After taking over (before Volna Pinsk on 8/29/20): 1-4-5 (7 points in 10 matches). At least we started scoring goals.

The good news: Most of the squad was on contracts expiring in December 2020, so I can pick and choose who to keep. Spent much of these first 10 games bringing in young players on trials to decide who to bring in. The Belarus First League requires you to have two U-20 players on the field and four in the squad for every match. This squad was thin on top prospects and those two spots were liabilities most of the time. This offseason will be an opportunity to resolve that. 

[The Ultimate Football Manager Challenge]

Alright, here we go. Decided that I'd randomize my playable countries to start the game to make this a little more ... random. After failing in interviews for some jobs in Norway, I was offered two gigs in the Belarusian First League.

Club One: Sputnik Rechitsa

Start date: Aug. 29, 2020

The team is only 13th in the Belarusian First League, but was picked to finish third - so hopefully that means there's some upside.

[The Ultimate Football Manager Challenge]

1 hour ago, _JHTB_ said:

I tend to go with as many leagues as my computer will allow without it taking an age to progress so for me it would be dependent on your own PC. When I first tried this challenge in FM20 I did have to restart on my first attempt because I loaded too many so it took me forever to get through 1 month without a club. 

That said I will echo what others have said in have a rough idea of where you want your initial journey to go and remember that not adding a league isn't the end of the road as you can easily add/remove leagues as you go along. Even if you don't have specific leagues in mind, you can easily load by continent, this time round I loaded pretty much all non European leagues with a few countries in Europe loaded, but will add/remove leagues based on where my reputation is and what sort of job I'd settle for as a future option.

Thanks for the great advice, everyone. Have been running a game over the past week just to get a feel for the new game with about 10 countries and it has run fine, so perhaps I'll stick around that threshold.

[The Ultimate Football Manager Challenge]

Quick question as someone interested in pursuing this challenge for the first time for those who have started already/done this in the past.

How many countries/leagues do you typically load into the database as playable at the start of the save? Trying to get a sense of that to make sure I go about it the right way from the beginning.