turnip
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Posts posted by turnip
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Youth Intake
The facilities here are good - well, the description says "Excellent" across the board, but if it ain't maxed-out, I ain't calling it Excellent.
I've made a bit of a point in this save not to sign youngsters with crap Determination, and I'm not changing that now, when I'm only likely to be at the club for a couple of seasons (probably).
Clearly, the academy staff consider attacking players to be worth spending time developing, and everyone else essentially worthless. Still, 17 Finishing on a 16-year old striker is very tasty and although it's clear that 90% of Nikoloski's CA is propping up his Finishing, Dribbling and First Touch, if you're going to have lopsided attributes, I'd rather those three than, like Long Shots, Free Kicks and Long Throws.
Karanovic is a more well-rounded player, although the gaps in his mental attributes are big enough to drive entire continents through. A fair amount younger than Nikoloski, though.
Trajkoski looks like he could be a good Box-to-Box Midfielder when he's developed. Ideally, he'd have some actual ability with a football right now, though. He can head the ball. Whoop-de-freakin'-do. With his Jumping Reach of 2 I'm sure that'll come in handy.
Dimitrijevic is marginally my favourite of these 4 players. In no small part because he can play AMC and AMR (ST, too, but I doubt he'll play there any time soon). It's a bit of flexibility that's helpful if a player's on the bench in a game, and he actually has the attributes to potentially be useful even now.
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Season 20: FK Partizan Beograd, Serbian SuperLeague
October - Winter Transfer Window
Other than the loss at Red Star (fully deserved; we were crap), it's been going well. We played essentially a backup XI in our two cup matches, which almost didn't work against Cukaricki, but we've mostly stuck with our best XI (according to me) other than rotating for injuries. Performances have been... fine, I guess? The pressing still doesn't remotely work, which is proving to be frustrating since every other team appears to manage it against us, and some of our passing would make amateur teams cringe with embarrassment, but as with earlier in the season, when we sync it is just smashing to watch.
We're top of the league and have a healthy lead. Our expectation is only to reach the Conference League, and I think we're going to surpass that at this point. While we're definitely living an Economy lifestyle right now, it's fair to say not every Serbian team is. Our total wage bill is £147k p/w at the moment - Red Star spend £137k just on their top 3 earners. Their manager is a complete loser, though; they haven't made it out of the Champions League League Phase and had to go through 2 rounds of qualifying to get that far. Thankfully, it looks like we'll be taking some of that money off their hands next season. They clearly don't know how to use it.
Transfers
Rumours that I also don't know how to spend money are also hard to disprove. We grew the club's coffers with sales of our backup DR to the MLS and our 3rd-choice DC to Palermo. Arrieta is an old DC who was out on loan at Rosenborg last season and I gave away to Salernitana to get rid of him. A couple of loans to other teams in our league to give young players some game time.
Ibrahim Camara is another talented African MC we picked up for not very much. We don't really need him at the moment, but I think he could be excellent.
With Bressan leaving the club for actual money, we needed a new backup DR and Yan Chia-ming (who came through Ulsan's youth academy) looked like a cheap and cheerful option. Can also double as an AMR if needed (although we did sign another of those as well).
Similarly, with our 3rd choice DC leaving, a spot opened up for a young DC in our squad. Diego can play DL, too, although really only as an IFB; but we sometimes use them, so it worked out nicely.
We also needed a 3rd-choice GK in the squad so that I've got someone I don't hate when our first two options leave in the summer and the scouts can't find anyone to replace them. Munoz will hang out with our B-Team and hopefully develop a bit with them.
I also made a few cheap signings on deadline day to fill out the U-19s and B-Team with a bit more actual quality. I wouldn't say any of them are amazing, but Kazaryan could be interesting and my coaches don't immediately hate Guruzeta, which is unusual in its own right.
The loanee we brought in is a DL because our backup was being bid on by a Saudi team and I don't like him anyway. There were actually 2 DLs I wanted more than the one we brought in, but both had agents whose negotiating tactic was, put simply, to compete to be the biggest ***** imaginable.
Squad players
Rade and Velibor were with the team when I took over. Neither had played a single game for the club before then, though.
Rade has been our first-choice Half-Back since the start of the season. He's a bit limited, technically, but he does a decent job. I might start training him as a Ball-Playing Defender, since I think he's got the attributes for it.
Velibor has mostly played as a Striker, despite not being as quick as I normally want. 5 goals and 3 assists in 11 appearances is really good, though, and I'm hoping he's someone we can keep around for a couple of seasons at least.0 -
Season 20: FK Partizan Beograd, Serbian SuperLeague
I resigned from 1860 the day after the Champions League final. A few days after that, the Partizan job became available.
SpoilerTruth be told, I dropped a save here and went forward a month or so to see if the job I actually wanted became available, but it didn't.
Partizan haven't been particularly good in this save, only winning the league a couple of times - the last time back in 2028 - and finished in 5th last season, outside of European spots.
As usually happens if you take over this kind of side, the squad has a bunch of pretty mid cloggers, who've been around the club for ages. Not bad, but not really the kind of quality that lets you kick on, and often on fairly high wages. Still, there's a solution to that:
Transfers
Brkovic left the club before I joined (it still annoys me it takes basically a month for a club to sign a manager in this kind of situation), and I probably would have kept him, but we didn't have much of a transfer budget, so that sale did help. The other players we sold were ones I wanted rid of.
Jaime Soria was a GK on loan last season with a mandatory fee. Annoying, since he isn't very good (and is performing horribly). Harm de Bruin is his backup - a reasonable old player I won't be embarrassed to put on the pitch.
Ahmed Gamal was brought in to provide a good option at DR. He missed the first couple of league matches with international duty and the incumbent in that position played like an arthritic, blind, husky. Gamal isn't great yet, but if nothing else, we should be able to flip him for £12m-£15m next summer.
Miguel Paredes had been on my radar for a few years, without ever being good enough to sign at 1860. We were short of an outright striker (lots of 'Forwards', though) and Miguel was a cheap option.
I'd been trying to sell one of my DCs to raise extra transfer funds when that guy picked up a 2-3 month injury. Sergio Gil was brought in as a first-team ready option who can also play at DL. Again, someone I'd had my eye on for a while. I think he could be very good.
Paulin Ellon got an unexpectedly excellent report from one of my scouts (he'd been on my shortlist before as a 'eh, could be good' option), prompting me to put an offer in. Saint Etienne also went in for him, so he was able to negotiate a better contract than he initially asked for. Shades of Christian Dongmo, who was one of the best playmakers in the world for almost 10 years. His potential isn't rated a full 4+1 stars, but he was at a small club even by Cameroonian standards, so I think he'll be better than that.
We were a little light on creative options in central midfield. Nelson Serna looks like he could be fantastic after he gets a couple of years of first-team football.
Achraf Rehani, meanwhile, was on a free after he broke his foot at the end of last season. He's not amazing, but gives us another good option at MC, AMC and ST. And, again, if he plays well, should be someone we can flip for a few million next summer.
Fixtures
With no distractions in Europe, we've been able to focus entirely on the league. We've had a fairly settled team, although have had a few injuries already.
The match against Indija was chaotic - we went attacking, with a 4-2-4, and although we looked dangerous going forward, we practically drew them a map to our goal whenever they attacked.
We play some nice football, but the players' approach to closing down is to wander over to the opposition player, shout "hi there" from about 20 yards away and then show a healthy respect for personal space. Some work to do there, methinks.
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13 hours ago, NineCloudNine said:
Your evidence for this statement includes an offer for one of your players which is roughly double the record transfer fee ever paid to a Hungarian club.
>90% of the things that happen in Football Manager, where a player is involved, are unrealistic.
Do we prevent teams from the Vanarama North/South from ever reaching the Premier League because it's never happened in real life before? No.
Do we ever see teams from San Marino reaching the Group Stages of the Champions League? No.
Hell, have PSG ever won the Champions League? No.
So why is it somehow unrealistic and stupid to want AI-managed teams to put in appropriate bids for players?
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PSG is a clown show and using them as an example of anything other than "how not to run a football club" is a bad idea.
I haven't touched this save for a long time because I've been enjoying my other save, but here we go. As a club, we have £314m in the bank with a transfer budget of £140m. We've made £120m net from transfers this season.
Viktor was signed for his MFRC of £725k from Helsingborgs in the summer. He played all 8 games in the Champions League Group Stage, getting 3 Assists, 1 Goal and an average rating of 7.53 in those matches. In real life, with performances like that against Atletico Madrid, AC Milan, Real Madrid, PSG, Stuttgart, Club Brugge and Schalke, he would be being talked up as one of the best young midfielders on the planet. I expect to get bids of around £5m in the summer for him.
At 18 years old, Erik Valencsik has 18 caps and 5 goals for a Hungary team who've had quite possibly the worst manager in their history. He has 3 goals and 3 assists in 7 Champions League matches so far this season, with an Average Rating of 7.3. Newcastle offered £3.5m for him in the January transfer window.
Diego Villalba is a goalkeeper whose only flaw is a better First Touch than half the real-life keepers in the Premier League. He's a couple of weeks away from getting his Hungarian nationality and therefore an EU passport. He's one of the best young goalkeepers in the world. Porto bid £12,25m for him in January.
Pedro Hernandez is a centre-back with no flaws, other than being average at Passing. As he is, he'd be a reliable 3rd centre-back for any top team in Europe playing with a back four, and that ignores the fact he's accomplished as a DR and WB/R. Dortmund offered £9.5m for him in January.
Transfer Values are broken.
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Season 19: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga
A ridiculous second half of the season that barely let up. In the league, we only dropped points against Bayern (we played them off the park), Hertha Berlin (we were the better team, but not by much) and Dortmund (who gegenpressed us to hell and should have won by a couple more). On the final day, we comprehensively out-played Freiburg but the trophy presentation was nowhere to be seen. I get that the FA are probably fed up of taking the trophy to Munich, but I where's my moment of glory, goddamit?
I actually felt a bit sorry for Dortmund, who won their final six league matches 4-0, 3-1, 5-1, 8-1, 9-0 and 4-0 but finished a point behind us. St Pauli, meanwhile, were utter ******* all season. Shout out to the Koln goalkeeper, who despite conceding 5 goals against us, still got a 7.4 rating - I counted 3 genuinely world-class saves amidst the carnage. Overall, we were a lot better in the league this season and although we weren't the best by every metric, the all-round performance feels well-earned.
In Europe, meanwhile, we were basically armed savages. Rennes dominated the first leg, but after getting the injury-time equaliser to take the second leg to extra time, our fresher legs took the game away from them. The mugging we gave Man City, though, was obscene, with our only two moments of quality (honestly, they could have been the only 30 seconds we had the ball in the entire second leg) giving us - and Ange N'Dri, in particular - two goals. We completed the process of pissing off an entire city by getting another very fortunate injury-time goal to win back-to-back ties in the least deserved way possible.
After those two ties, getting Benfica in the Semi-Final was a pleasant surprise. A more pleasant surprise than that was seeing quite how bad Kgotso Malgas (a former signing of mine, way back for Lusitania Lourosa) was in goal for them. Of the 5 goals we scored, he probably should have saved 4. Fun matches, though.
And then there was the final. I was - again - pleasantly surprised to find us up against Inter. Almost more surprising than that, though, was the news article I got a couple of days beforehand:
A "fitting moment", indeed. I umm-ed and ahh-ed over the team selection for quite a while, for one very particular reason: we've been playing effectively a team of backups the entire season in Europe. With a couple of exceptions:
- Nicu Ispir is a 'Star Player' and started to get a bit antsy about all these games he was missing towards the end of the season
- Gustavo (backup GK) had his PA get rated downwards, and at that point you're basically just chum for the sharks, so Morganti got swapped in
- I let the Assistant Manager register the squad, and Shalonikov was the only AMR he registered
What that meant is that we'd be going into the final of the Champions League with Stefan Dietl at DL and Leon Ostheimer at DM in the starting XI - both academy graduates, 17 and 18 years old, respectively. Still, in real life a player would be understandably hacked off if he'd helped the team reach the Champions League final, only to get benched for the big day, so we stuck to the planned XI. (It did help my decision that Sulieman and Sa-ngopol were both injured, mind).
Spoiler
Inter had a couple of good early chances, and got in some decent shooting positions, but were a bit wasteful with their long shots. Meanwhile, we hit the woodwork twice in regular time.
Shalonikov's goal - as deserved as it was - was hardly a thing of beauty. Inter's 24-year old World-Class DC dawdled with the ball on the halfway line, Shalonikov nicked it off him and ran through to smash it into the top corner, via a slight deflection.
As our players have improved across the season - and they really have - we increasingly just used our 'home' tactic in matches, with the more gung-ho 4-2-4 reserved for Away games against teams who weren't strong enough to flatten us (e.g. Benfica).
And in terms of player development, while last season we only had a couple of players finish the season with average ratings above 7.0, this season it's very different, with 10 players hitting that milestone. Goals-wise, we were heavily reliant on Ispir, whose league form towards the end of the season was excellent, with 14 goals in his last 12 starts. Other players did chip in, with our two AMLs - N'Dri and Pablo Marques - in particular taking advantage of BBPHs to get 17 goals between them. I feel a bit bad for N'Dri: he broke his ribs in the first league game of the season, forcing us to play Pablo Marques, who played really well, and then N'Dri struggled for form when he was fit again.
It's worth pointing out again that we have a really young team. Even by the standards of the squads I normally put together. Albisu is the only player to get regular playing time (aside from Dimas, who left) over the age of 21. We're mostly a team of 19 and 20 year olds.
Speaking of, not all that glitters plays for the first team.
The U19s won the UEFA Youth League, beating Newcastle, Benfica, Nice and Sturm Graz on their way to a win on penalties against Club Brugge.
We managed to get another upgrade to the Training Facilities approved by the board, but the president was very rude when I asked about upgrading Youth Facilities. Odd behaviour, considering bringing academy players into the first team is still a board objective (although I'm pretty sure that's broken - Dietl and Ostheimer each played over 15 games for us this season and the status for that objective is still "Very Disappointed").
We have plenty of money in the bank, now, and were the only team to break even across the season, as if that means anything.
Youth Intake
Looks good. Dertwinkel is obviously the jewel in the crown, with 17 Tackling at 15 years old, which is just nuts. Keles could be good, too, but being Either-footed has quite a large impact on attributes, making it hard to tell at a glance.
Now it's time for a bit of a break and to think about next steps for the save.
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9 minutes ago, Brad0026 said:
I was asking do I need to re download the game? Sorry if it’s a silly question as said I’m not with technology
Sorry, I didn't read your question closely enough! You don't need to re-download unless you've also replaced the drive it was installed on.
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Loading/saving might be a bit slower if you're storing saves on an external drive, but it should work just fine
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Strictly speaking, I don't see these rubbish teams having 60% possession against good teams in FM either, because you haven't provided any evidence of it.
On the other hand, I just had a look at my current save, from 2041. So here's a fairly random selection of matches from the Premier League:
Now, if your argument is that it's too common for a team to have too much possession in a match, that's a different issue and that's why there are sub-forums here for you to give feedback.
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34 minutes ago, andu1 said:
TBH, the AI managers tendency plays out of defence i consider it to be bugged in the current ME.
AI teams that have these managers hoard possession by having endless passes between defenders, no matter how crap the team is.
Every team can have 60% possession if they have an AI manager with plays out of defence...
I mean "endless passes between defenders, no matter how crap the team is" is 90% of the reason Burnley got relegated in real life this season.
I don't think it's good, or clever to spend an entire season punching yourself in the face like that, but if it happens in real life I'm not going to blame FM if it also happens in the game.
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I only just realised that we're not playing our Home European matches at our stadium.
My keen eyes noticed this fact when I saw that a session of training was being lost to 'Travel' the day before, well, a Home European match, rather than the fact we've been getting more than our max attendance for those games. (Although not the match against Sociedad, for some reason. Weird.)
I is good at the Football Manager.
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Season 19: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga
A decent round of fixtures. The draws were fair enough and we absolutely passed *** **** ******* off the pitch. In Europe, Baliko continued his good season with a couple of nicely-taken goals; and Seidel signed off for us for the season by nicking the late winner against Sporting. He's now on loan with Cardiff.
Transfers
I was a bit cavalier when choosing who to send out on loan. "Everyone" is not the right answer, turnip.
Rodolfo Dimas was the 'big' sale. He wanted a new contract at the start of the season, but I was able to fob him off with a "Hey, how about you get some clean sheets first" promise, and once he'd completed that, a few clubs were interested in him. I was hoping for a lot more money, as were the board, but either no-one wanted to spend more than the £6.5m America ponied up, or had other targets they could go after instead. Still, we signed him for £425k, so that's a nice bit of profit.
Joao Noronha is also leaving, moving to Legia, but that goes through on the 1st Feb and I took these screenshots on the 31st January. They're taking him off our hands for £3.9m. Again, profit.
Morganti probably isn't quite as good as Dimas yet, but he should get there and then surpass our former keeper. He looks very solid already.
Sun-burned Kapuscinski was a late signing once the scale of the loan exodus became clear to me. His MFRC of £2.9m was very welcome, what with us having a transfer budget of £3.2m left. Will rotate at DL and DR.
Bradi Maclean comes in to give a bit of backup up front, with Hernandez going on loan. Not amazing, but should have a goal or two in him and with the low transfer fee, we should be able to flip him for a good profit in a season or two.
Valentin Ardelean was signed from the same club we stole Nicu Ispir from, albeit for more money. He's a bit of an odd player right now, but I'm hoping with some game time and his technical attributes developing a bit he should turn into a very creative, very talented player.
Speaking of Nicu Ispir, we received a pretty hefty bid for him from Newcastle - up to £70m over the next couple of seasons - but we turned it down to no complaints from Nicu. I don't have another good striker target at the moment, at least not one who can slot into our tactic, so it would have been a huge gamble.
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Season 19: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga
Fixtures
After an excellent September, we had a tough October. We were lucky to get anything out of all of our draws and deservedly beaten in the defeats. We probably edged the league match against Dortmund on fine margins, ground out the dullest of 0-0s against Juve and got spanked by Man City, but the back-to-back 3-0s against Koln and St Pauli (bad though both those teams are) were as dominant as the scorelines suggest.
And then we had a great December, with some exciting, albeit chaotic football. We got very lucky against Leverkusen but our kamikaze counter-attacking worked much better against Hertha.
We are trying to stick to having almost fully-rotated teams for midweek matches, so we could be performing better in Europe. It has given useful game time to our stable of rotational DCs and AMRs, though, along with giving Stefan Dietl 6 starts. And honestly, player development is more useful than flogging ourselves to be successful in Europe, failing (because we're still not that good) and also harming our chances domestically.
Off the field, we've continued to improve, too. An upgrade to the training facilities was completed in October (I think) and we managed to set up what could be a very useful Affiliation with Pohang Steelers:
It's ostensibly a First Option arrangement, but I do like the potential extra money, too.
Finally, something very weird happened with our game against not-Socieded:
Huh?
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With the very small nations, it's likely that most high potential players will come through at a parent/affiliated club just because of how the game seems to model player development and the link with reputation. This seems to happen more often the longer a save goes on.
For South Asian countries, this often means Australia or South Korea (or ASPIRE in Qatar). Central Asian players usually come through in Russia (or Germany, albeit less often). Caribbean players usually get split between their related former colonial overlords (e.g. Dominica --> Spain; Guadeloupe --> France; Barbados --> England).
Part of the problem then becomes that if they come through the Youth Academy of a club in a different nation, they'll often be eligible for second nationality when they're young. And if they're good enough, they'll often switch to the 'better' nationality even if they've played a couple of games for their nation of birth.
Honestly, it's also hard to understand if you're describing players who actually have high potential wasting away in a rubbish league (i.e. you've used the in-game editor or a third-party tool to check)... or if you're describing players who have relatively high ability but minimal chance to improve, which is usually why players who look good are left to rot at Gazebo Wranglers FC for their entire career.
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Load more leagues, then you'll see it happening
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While that's obviously frustrating, this kind of 'we will have the money' situation isn't something SI have programmed into the game yet.
It's why - personally - I will never go into Deadline Day without either having: a fat load of cash and a bloated shortlist of players I can spend that money on; or, the full knowledge that I don't have to sell anyone I haven't already got backup for.
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It does happen in FM, but it's very rare.
Like injuries (which happen less often than in real life), if goalkeeper red cards matched real life numbers, it would just cause people to get angry and complain about it.
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5 hours ago, Jimbokav1971 said:
I'm actually tempted to have a delve into set-pieces and I absolutely will if I get a big TM through an intake. The current UI is just so frustrating and seems completely at odds with how SI say they want to develop the game.
I've seen my Set Piece coach arrange all kinds of stupid stuff - when he's supposed to be pretty good at his job. Like you, I don't really want to have to sort it all out myself, so it's just a source of frustration when my Target Man is allowed to stay up for Defensive Corners, or my covering defenders on Attacking Corners are aerial threats.
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Season 19: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga
Transfers
No significant players left us, except Walser on loan (he wanted a new contract but unfortunately, his PA got dialled down to 'Good Bundesliga 2 player'). We tried to sell him, but no-one was interested.
The biggest sales were all of young players we didn't need. Luke Hernandez is a crap American midfielder. Adonay Bercomo was signed from from an Amateur team, didn't develop last season, and is crap. Ilsinho I would have preferred to keep, since he's a Cayman Islands international, but he is also crap, so...
Slavik and Shalonikov were both signed from Trencin, whose Youth Academy obviously got a lucky roll on the old Random Number Generator the year they came through. Slavik was actually the first one identified since he was in the Slovak national team, and when I had a look at the Trencin squad, there was Shalonikov.
Shalonikov is the more obviously ready for the first team - probably alternating between AMR and ST - and the plan is that Slavik will get regular game time as injury cover and in our midweek team.
Ally Sulieman (he has Eritrean second nationality) was someone my scouts found. Obviously very good but wasn't an immediate target for the summer until other teams started going in for him and I decided he was too good not to go in for. Will swap between DR and DC this season.
We needed a backup GK but there's still a massive shortage of 'good enough' young players, so we had to pay a premium to bring in Gustavo. We probably could have brought the wages down if we'd promised more game-time, but Dimas was so good last season I couldn't justify demoting him.
Baliko is a good, pretty flexible midfielder who gives us cover in 2-3 positions on the pitch (tactics-dependent), lively enough to be an issue coming on as a sub and should have plenty of potential for development.
Meanwhile, with Walser having a tantrum over not being good enough to get a new contract, we needed a new DL. Berndroth only played a couple of times for Stuttgart as they got relegated last season, but I think he could be terrific. Finding good full-backs who can jump is hard.
Alan Burger is another player I've been aware of for a while. He got a full season with Las Palmas' first team last year and looks to be a very solid DC, even if he doesn't develop (which my scout and coaches all agree he should).
We needed another striker and without wanting to pay £10m+ for a backup for Ispir who'd probably just get annoyed when he inevitably doesn't get enough game time, we brought in a rare older player in Gaizka Albisu, who's had 6 very good seasons in La Liga with Cadiz. A good all-round player.
Fixtures
We had a good pre-season, with a nice little tour of Uzbekistan and - of course - were one of two Bundesliga teams to get drawn against second-tier opposition in the first round of the cup. A tough match, but a win for the second-stringers. Dortmund are up next; unsurprisingly, considering we play them 3 days later in the league.
The matches against Furth and Hoffenheim were fairly straight-forward affairs, with us outplaying our opposition. We also arguably out-played the team whose name I always make fun of, with a penalty for them the only reason they had a higher xG than us.
The Champions League looks tough, with Away games against Lazio, Man City and Sporting alongside Home matches with Nice, Juventus and Real Sociedad. A Home game against Celtic and road trip to Hammarby look to be our easiest games.
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XaW is correct, but there is an issue where over time there will be a gradual shift towards more of those players being produced through the youth academies of teams in active leagues.
Not a problem if you're only running one league, but most people don't.
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No clubs have come in for your players because your players are happy. You just won the Champions League, after all.
Once you fail to offer them acceptable contracts, they'll become unhappy quickly enough. Then clubs will come in for them. Problem solved.
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If you're a small team, you have to sell players. And I don't mean 1 or 2 players, I mean you have to find at least £30-£40m of players to sell each season. Your money from being in the Champions League should be peanuts compared to the money you get from selling players.
Once you're in that position, you're ready to win the Champions League and deal with the fallout. Otherwise, you are ****ed.
In real life, every time Porto/Sporting/Benfica do well, their squad gets abused by big teams swooping in and signing anyone good. The difference - it sounds like - is that those clubs have a conveyor belt of players coming through the youth squads, who can replace the players they sell. And you don't.
Your club's reputation has gone through the roof because you won the biggest - and hardest - club competition in the world.
Jordan Henderson burned and salted what was a very good reputation with football fans for the promise of filthy lucre; it's not unrealistic that your mediocre players want to cash in on their success.
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In Search of Incompetence
18 seasons into this save, and I've had every available European league running as - at least - VIew-only for the whole time. Some on Playable.
That's a lot of opportunities for AI managers to battle it out for the title of 'most incompetent'.
I'm not talking about big clubs failing to reach Europe; I'm talking about teams doing profoundly, impressively badly in their league.
Spanish D2 - 2036; Tarancon; 2 points -------- 2037; Mirandes; 2 points. (Impressively, in 2030, Mirandes finished with 3 points
)
Spanish La Liga - 2040; Ponferrada; 7 points
Slovenian Second League - 2027; Tolmin; 7 points
Slovak Second League - 2039; Spisska Nova Ves; 4 points. (Sered finished second-bottom that season with 5 points)
Portuguese Championship - 2040; Bustelo; 2 points
Icelandic First Division - 2037; KV; 4 points
Icelandic Premier Division - 2035; IBV; 7 points
Greek Super League 2 - 2026; PAO Rouf; 5 points
Greek Super League 1 - 2025; Panserraikos; 7 points
German Liga 3 - 2040; Jena; 6 points & 2037; Altona 93; 6 points
French National 2 - 2038; EFC Frejus Saint-Raphael; 2 points
Finnish First Division - 2032; Atlantis FC; 5 points
Czech Second Division - 2037; Zapy; 4 points
Belgian Jupiler Pro League - 2037; RE Virton; 7 points
Austrian Premier Division - 2031; FAC Wien; 7 points
and I've left the best 'til last
Bulgarian Second Division - 2031; Svetkavitsa Targovishte; 1 point
In mitigation, despite me running a gigantic database, for some reason Bulgarian second-tier teams really seem to struggle for players.
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Season 18: TSV 1860 München, German Bundesliga
das spitze Ende des Stocks
Against Stuttgart, we did very little until a backpost cross found Ange N'Dri exploiting the match engine's hard-on for broken back-post headers (BBPH). Our high press caused the panic and mistake that let us beat Hamburg.
Bull ***** FC gave us a good game but also a BBPH. We had no recognised (good) strikers against Mainz, so played Cristian and N'Dri up top and the Great Dehumidified One lofted a delightful ball for one of the Pablos to finish.
An arid BBPH and penalty saw off a spirited Furth before (we will utter no details of the atrocities witnessed against Dortmund) an error-strewn performance saw my delicate voice shredded by constant screaming, shrieking and profanities as we drew Hoffenheim.
Freiburg can consider themselves unlucky to have lost against us, but we did whip out a BBPH against Eintracht Frankfurt as part of a deserved win.
We lost convincingly against Hertha and Bayern but good performances against Koln and Wolfsburg left things pretty tasty going into the final round of matches. How tasty?
So we were left with a match against Leverkusen, while Hoffenheim were playing Bull ***** FC, with whoever finished higher qualifying for the Champions League.
Mind you, we weren't just playing Leverkusen, we were facing Wichai Wongsrikeaw, one of the most detestable little snots I'd managed at Lusitania Lourosa. A central defender we signed from Thailand, who thought he was hot **** despite having single-digit Jumping Reach, and who spent most of his miserable time under my management complaining about one thing or other and just generally being the kind of immense pain in the arse that you remember with hatred 12 seasons later. Now, according to the game, he's "one of world football's global superstars", with 124 caps for Thailand and commanding a regular spot as one of Leverkusen's centre-backs.
However...
The reason he was pissed off with me at Lusitania Lourosa was that I never played him at centre-back. Why? Well, because his single-digit Jumping Reach made him a liability.
Leverkusen play him at DCL.
So, theoretically, if Ange N'Dri - our AML, if you've forgotten - were to put a far-post cross into the box, aimed at Nicu Ispir...
Yeah. Basically, get ****ed Wichai Wongsrikeaw.
Obviously, I'm delighted (I'd say "astonished" but I'm not sure you can claim that at the end of a 34-match season) to have finished 4th, but arguably I'm just as thrilled that Hertha won the Bundesliga. The first time in 110 years. 1860 Munchen finished second that season. I'm just saying.
Thing is, though, I've said throughout the season that we've massively overperformed. How badly?
Genuinely, I think the correct response to this is: "lol, lmao".
If you'd offered me 14th at the start of the season, I'd have been thrilled.
Nicu Ispir is the best player in our squad and he's a "Good Bundesliga player". The rest of the squad ranges from "decent Bundesliga player" to "good Bundesliga 2 player". Our team stats are generally slightly better than the 14th the xG table has us at, but not by much.
We finished 4th in the league and only 4 players had an Average Rating of over 7.00. This is so stupid it's hard to parse.
I do love Nicu Ispir and he will need a new contract at some point in the next 12 months. Thankfully, I don't think he's good enough yet that someone will drop £54m to trigger his MRFC. Ange N'Dri continues to defy his modest CA by just being good at crossing and passing, and obviously knowing when to pull the trigger on a BBPH.
Rodolfo Dimas turned out to be just the kind of keeper we needed - mostly reliable, but with a bad habit of hoofing the ball aimlessly downfield when he's nervous. Abdoulaye Samassi, meanwhile, is just a very competent centre-back; he rarely does anything other than defend and he's very good at that.
We are going to need to improve in the summer, though, and in a big way. Thankfully, the board have decided that being stingy is somewhat uncouth:
Also, the whole "sign 'em, play 'em, make 'em better" thing is - slowly - working out for us.
Biagioni is worth about £170m, but I might be able to get Brard with our new-found wealth. That would be nice...
We got £78m for finishing fourth, which is very nice.
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[FM24] 1860 players, much squad depth
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Season 20: FK Partizan Beograd, Serbian SuperLeague
We won the league.
Better than that, though, was the manner in which we did it. We spanked Mladost GAT 6-1 on the final day of the regular season, before the Final Stage started. That win meant that the league title was claimed without having to play any of those 'bonus' matches. Nice.
Even better than that, though, was that the Head Coach of the club I'd wanted to join last season was fired before that match kicked off. Meaning that I could resign from Partizan as soon as we lifted the trophy and apply for the job I'd wanted all along. Sorry, babes; it's not you, it's me. It's nothing personal. Still friends?