turnip

You can add Ahmad Mozafari to the list of players leaving, and 'just when the hell does the English transfer window close?' to the list of questions I have. About freakin' time, to be honest. A more dedicated whiner I would challenge you to find. We don't need him, either, good though he is. Between Padilla, Jovičić, Bucur, Silva, Barroso and Traslaviña, we've got enough quality in the first team alone, plus arguably another 5 DCs between the U23s, U19s and U19-Bs I could call on in the worst kind of injury crisis. [edit] Nahuel Ghisleni has gone, too. Apparently the German transfer window also knows no bounds, so It Came From Another Species' Testicles Leipzig have signed him for £11m or so. He got relegated to the bench last season when Mari took his spot, and Dylan Chambers hasn't gone on loan, so Nahuel's ability to promise more than he delivers won't be missed. @muncher_316 I spend a lot of time checking international squads and just scouting anyone who looks like they might have a smidge of talent. I'll often also go back to small/random clubs I've signed good prospects from and check their young players. It all takes time. I play very slowly these days.

Season 8: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin Transfers The sales first. Slim Shady will aggravate us no longer. As he left, he muttered something about the club being "so empty without me" but no-one was really listening at that point. I wanted more for him, but mostly I just wanted rid of him. Traoré - yeah, that one stung a bit. In a realism sense, it's hard to justify selling him, certainly for as little as we did, but the fact is that we were basically set up tactically to make the most of having a big lump up front - because he was so good at it - but it actually meant we struggled when he wasn't playing. Valentin Salaun was our DL, but he seemed to have reached his limit and that's when I reach for the guillotine. Malgas was our backup GK and Gabriel Guillard was a forward we'd signed on a free from non-league Istres, who had a mediocre season on loan with Angers last time round and now gets to earn over £50k p/w in the Premier League while not really being very good. Bizarre. The other sales were just the usual trash coming to the end of their contracts. (Enrick Coutty has 5 caps for Martinique, but switched to represent France after signing with us. I'm sorry, Martinique ) And the signings. José Roberto is our new DL/WBL, Aqueveque our new backup GK and Rainer Schröder is an MC/AMC/ST who can be a sub for our striker, or cover for Marques in midfield. They're the only new signings likely to get more than the odd token appearance. Madureira and Brlenic are staying with their old clubs for the season. Velasquez looked far too good not to steal from Porto, and Eric Silveira also looks like a really good prospect. Of the flotsam and jetsam (everyone from Tellechea down), the surprise package is Yaliké-Balie who only looked reasonable when we agreed to sign him over a year ago, but now looks like he should get 50+ caps for Ivory Coast. We did also receive a few bids for Pogiso Mari and Roko Stanic. Stanic - actually acting like a Model Citizen - didn't bat an eyelid when I rejected the bids. Mari was a little upset, but that hasn't stopped him starting the season like he's prepared to set the whole league on fire. I wouldn't have blamed him for being more upset: £90m+ is a heck of a bid. Fixtures The Super Cup was bonkers. They had 3 shots on target and they all went in - one of them a mis-hit cross from about 40 yards that our GK charged out at so wildly that I think he was outside the area when the ball went into the net. Our new formation is still a bit of a work-in-progress, but is basically a 5-2-2-1 with Wing-Backs and Inside Forwards. But it's flexible, and we've got the players to fill basically any role we need. I'm keen to use Ribera as the focal point of our attack, because after his excellent season in La Liga, it'd be pretty unrealistic not to either sell him for a bunch of money or give him a decent run in the team. So far it's working.

All depends on database size. If you're loading all players from the nation, you can make a fortune signing talented young Spanish players (from the 4th tier or U19 clubs) and flogging them after a season or two. Keep one or two of 'em if you want

Season 7: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin February - May A couple of losses in the back-half of the league campaign. Losing Away at Sporting isn't much of a surprise, but getting beaten by a bad Santa Clara was, even if I had sent out the second-string team. We did have to send the backups out a few times as the games piled up, so the fact it bit us where the hair is short and curly as infrequently as it did is a credit to how strong our squad is getting. The draw against Marítimo on the final day was a dead rubber and I tried to send out as Portuguese a team as I could manage, but annoyingly, the U19-Bs, U19s and U23s had all played the day before so we had to pick a couple of foreign-born players. (The AssMan obviously brought on our first team players towards the end). We scraped past Everton in the Champions League, with the penalty shootout getting close to being hilarious. ManUre were always going to be too good for us. So yeah, we won the league again. More comfortably than last season, too. Mind you, I just checked Benfica's schedule and in March they had league games against Porto, Sporting and VdG (which finished 5-5, lol) as well as Champions League games against Athletic Bilbao. So they did well to finish as close as they did. Never mind, they just got dumpstered in the Cup Final. Again. This time to Estrela da Amadora, who you won't see in the league table below. Lol. (One of our players scored the second goal. Well done, Ocampo.) Not a great season for Casa Pia. They only won two matches all season, both in the cups, both on penalties, and one of those was against a 4th-tier side. Yikes. As for us, the usual suspects got most of our goals and assists.That includes Shady Masoud, who spent the entire season unhappy and whose performances were a shade down on last season's, but still more than good enough to make me happy. Pogiso Mari had a brief stint of being unhappy when I rejected a bid but got over it quickly enough to have a very good season. Ivan D'Alessandro on the other wing had his best season for us, even if he does seem to be close to his PA. Ribera finished off his terrific season in Spain with a curiously-specific award but deserved it nonetheless. All of which pales, of course, next to the Lusitanian Lagginhorn who bagged another 29 goals in all competitions to make it 111 goals in 168 appearances since joining the club. The guy is supposed to dislike Big Matches, but has scored 22 goals in 28 continental matches. Mozafari is another player who's spent most of the season unhappy about something or other. I tried to flog him in January, but no-one was willing to stump up the £50m I wanted. His time at the club is up, though, with Padilla and - particularly - Jovičić having good seasons. Speaking of Jovičić, he won the NXGN award, at the head of a Lusitania Lourosa trifecta. It is kinda weird having these guys compared to the likes of Bastian Schweinsteiger, considering I'm playing with Fake Players. I'll wait for SI's explanation of that... Youth Intake Okay, I guess. Wagner was clearly the pick of the bunch (which is fair, he looks great) and I didn't immediately sign many of the rest, but one of them scored a hattrick in a youth game against Atleti while he was still on trial, and if you can't reward that kind of performance with a contract, then I'm not sure why you're even playing FM. Random Player Showcase Another random Spanish youth player we picked up on a free who my scouts were iffy on. 6 months making use of our training facilities and coaches and he was the subject of several interesting loan bids. Bochum got him and he's continued to develop like a madman. He looks like he could be something a bit special.

Ribera gets a new contract with a little over a year left on his current deal. A bit of a no-brainer for a player I'll admit I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop on. Fruitlessly, to date. He's been on loan in La Liga this season with Mallorca, a move I curated a lot more carefully than I usually do. He's joint-second top scorer in the league, behind - amusingly - the two strikers keeping our own Mor Talla Traoré out of the Senegal national team. I assume his oddly-low Average Rating is because he does nothing unless he scores, but I suspect Mallorca are as happy with his overall contributions as I am. [edit] He also just got his Spain debut, playing a 7.3 in a routine 3-0 friendly win over Cyprus.

A release clause for continental competition is only considered active if the 'selling' club isn't also in continental competition. It actually makes it easier to hang on to players now if you make the Champions League, since the league stage doesn't finish until late January. So even if you lose all your games, clubs only have a few days to get a bid in.

son 7: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin January Transfers The sale of David Rios wasn't entirely a surprise. Dortmund had come in a couple of times for him, but the price wasn't that interesting and he didn't want to leave. ManUre dropping £70m, though, is a different story, particularly when he hadn't been playing very well. Remember that we signed Rios for free. But before you feel too bad for the team we stole him from, the solidarity payment associated with the deal meant that A.D. Huracan, an amateur team from the Canary Islands, received just under £1.3m. Glorious. Sunday Offor was sold for a loss - his contract was expiring and he hadn't kicked on as much as I'd wanted. Leinonen was a funny sale; one of those players my scouts always liked despite him having no discernible talent and being pretty rubbish every time he took the field for our U23s. We also sent another couple of teams' worth of players out on loan. The big signing for the window was Barroso, a player I wasn't really aware of. His agent flagged him up on Deadline Day, while Wolfsburg had a bid in progress, but that fell through because Maritimo couldn't find a replacement and we swooped for his MFRC. Ribeiro had been on my shortlist for a while; shortly after arriving, he headed off on loan to Hoffenheim for the rest of the season. Skoglund came from Champions League strugglers Odds - the deal was agreed in the summer and he joined at the end of the Norwegian season. Barlocco is a good young player we've signed for the future and Onov someone I wanted to provide a bit of backup with some of my Spanish youngsters heading off on loan. Traslaviña, meanwhile, is someone I'd had a close eye on since his days in Colombia but Juventus had pipped us to before dumping in their second team like all big teams do with talented youngsters. We've got him on loan with a mandatory fee of £6.5m plus a bit extra. Fixtures Backup teams lost against Porto and Real Madrid, and very fortuitously won against Benfica. The rest of the time we've been okay, I guess. We've got Everton in the next round of the Champions League and we face Braga in the cup final. Random Player Showcase Umaro Mané is someone I mocked in an update when he came through in the Youth Intake because of his woeful Physical attributes, but after a couple of years of being locked in the gym for several hours every day, he's no longer quite such a liability and has even toughened up mentally from the experience. On a less flippant note, he's a good example of how a player can be viewed by coaching staff as a complete dud because of his CA, but that it can be quite deceptive. Now, I don't know what his PA is - the editor isn't enabled for this save - but Physical attributes are the easiest to improve, so with a decent base in his Technical attributes, he looks like someone who could have a decent professional career. Now, if his Technical/Physical attributes had been reversed, I would have released him and not spared him a second thought.

There are too many goalkeepers in the game, to make sure you always have at least one useless schlub to put between the sticks if you're playing a youth-only save. But - obviously - you can only have one goalkeeper on the pitch at any one time, unless you're really committed to doing things the hard way. And even if you're being as proactive as possible with having a couple of good goalkeepers in your squad who you rotate to make sure each one, you're the only club doing that. And goalkeepers get injured far less often than outfield players, so opportunities for the backup to get game time are limited. So fewer goalkeepers get the kind of opportunities they need to develop well. Add to that, that goalkeepers typically develop later than outfield players, but the game still starts locking off the 'star' values once a player hits 22 (which seems to be based on the development pattern of outfield players), at which age most goalkeepers still aren't getting first-team game time for a good team. So the scouts will be docking points for: them not getting playing time, for having a poor reputation (relatively), for having relatively low CA compared to other players their age, and for having developed less than other players their age. And if you're an elite team, it's even worse. Because scouts already do a pretty poor job of identifying the highest-potential players, and now you're asking them to find players who already have a bunch of cards stacked against them. So, yeah. The best goalkeepers are hard to find.

Okay, firstly this is funny. Padilla's had a decent amount of football so far this season, is next in line for a First XI spot if Bucur or Mozafari leave and is generally very happy at the club. So for him to say "Hey, how about I don't stay?" was clearly his agent pushing for a transfer. Getting dumped for being an arsehole is the kind of schadenfreude I can get behind. But but but... "Prefer[s] his clients to remain at their current club" and "Is rather awestruck by you"?? Clearly the combination that would make an agent try to go scorched earth on a club with 4 of his clients on the books.

Season 7: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin Fixtures An excellent few months, not-surprisingly ruined by Benfica. Traoré was injured for most of October, which showed us a vision of how we could play without a big lump up front. An - admittedly cursory - investigation of the data suggests we wouldn't score as many goals. [sigh] The search for a mobile colossus with some actual Pace continues. We've had a tougher run in the Champions League, too. Having slagged of Mainz, their team of hapless wannabes ran us harder than the 5-2 scoreline suggests. Meanwhile, drawing Leverkusen, PSG, Ajax, Juventus, Napoli and Real Madrid (the last two matches to come) in the Champions League feels like UEFA trying to put us in our place, considering some of the shitehawks operating elsewhere in the competition. We're still in with a chance of getting to the Playoffs, at least. Things are going okay in the cups. We deserved to beat Arouca and Belenenses but made hard work of both games, with some very poor goalkeeping performances and some remarkably inept shooting. Miscellany Under other circumstances, this might feel like the clichéd slap in the face. But we've always been about selling for profit, so this is just reinforcement that our strategy is working. Random Player Showcase I keep trying to keep player's contracts up to date. Mozafari calmed down at some point in October and he was happy to accept a new contract. Albert Bucur's head was turned by Liverpool's scout, but they've since wandered off (as far as Mozafari) so a new contract is in the oven for him. Meanwhile, Francisco Marques has made his usual astonishing progress in training and a new contract was thoroughly deserved. In fact, I've tried to be really proactive with contracts; much more so than I usually am. This means that the only Minimum Fee Release Clauses for players in our squad are for teams in the Champions League. And that clause is only active when we get eliminated. Which isn't yet. We are paying several players a lot of money, mind you, but we've got loads in the bank and - honestly - plenty of players we can sell for £20m+ if the need arises.

Season 7: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin July-August Transfers A mixed transfer window. I didn't want to sell Dongmo, but he came to me at the beginning of June wanting to leave, so I pointed to the MRFC in his contract... and then It's A Product of Bull Testicles of Leipzig came to me and pointed to Dongmo's MFRC and that was that. Carlos Paz played well last season but didn't have much room to grow, so I was happy to get that much for him. Wongsrikeaw came back from loan, said he wanted to be removed from the transfer list, and then a few days later said he wanted to join a bigger club: well, Mainz are rubbish, so have fun, you annoying piece of ****. Last season I thought Claudia Alba could be a long-term option; in a season where we won the league, reached the League Cup final and the knockouts of the Champions League, he dropped a 6.55 average rating, which probably tells you how good he actually is. And then Godfrey Mfaume and Javier Diaz were sold the day after our transfer window closed. Both were surprising sales, but neither was unwelcome. I doubt either player actually has a glittering career ahead of him, but at least Godfrey will get some game time over the course of his contract; Diaz will barely get a game, fail to develop and then get released at the end of his contract and and probably move to the MLS to finish out his career as a washed-up could-have-been. Mozafari was the subject of a bid by Arsenal the day before Deadline Day. He wanted to leave, but the bid was 'meh' and we didn't need the money, so we rejected and he got upset. Boohoo. Shady Masoud took the opportunity, on the same day, to tell me that he wanted to leave to join a better club; except no-one seemed interested in him, and the MFRC in his contract is for clubs in the Champions League but is only active if we aren't also in the Champions League. Which we are. So now I have two of my best players upset with me because their agents want to buy new homes/cars. Sure, I could sell them, but I roleplay as a heartless vindictive bastard in FM so they're going nowhere any time soon. As much money as we made in sales, we didn't really have anyone we wanted to sign for significant money. Fran is hopefully a long-term replacement for Paz and backup for whoever our DL currently is. Sofokleous is a DC prospect, Pantic an AMC we'll probably end up flipping for prospect because his Determination is awful (so I don't want that influencing the rest of the squad) and Asensi is yet another talented Spanish youngster. I did try signing a Portuguese DC from ManUre, but his agent was a dickhead when it came to 'Promises' and he ended up moving to Bayern (because players are really stupid, sometimes). Most of the players we signed were youngsters to fill out our various squads. Honestly, the point isn't even really to sign very talented youngsters; it's just to sign players who will be good enough to flip for enough profit that I'm not obliged to sell my best players to get by financially. Among the trash we picked up, we did find a Northern Irish DC playing for Stratford Town, who would probably have been hoovered up a League 1/2 team if I had those playable. He's not great, but he's an order of magnitude too good to have been slumming it in the lower reaches of English football. Honestly, this was a boring transfer window. When you can replace someone like Christian Dongmo with a home-grown player and feel happy with the decision, that's some real positive reinforcement that you're doing a reasonable job. Fixtures We had a match postponed because of a waterlogged pitch. And we've put our Goalkeepers on Penalty-taking duties. Possibly Direct Free Kicks as well, I can't remember. Our first team is pretty familiar from last season, so there's not been much bedding-in to do. The Cup win against Benfica did throw up an amusing record: As a squad, I don't know that we're immediately as strong as we were last season, but we've got strength in depth and the sheer size of the pile of money we're sitting on means that even if the new stadium takes longer and is more expensive than planned, we can deal with it. My only concern at the moment is that, apparently, the club is going through a takeover. The kind of takeover that doesn't generate any news messages, which seems like a bug as much as anything, but there you go. Since I feel like I'm in the final stretch of my time at the club, I may be willing to go nuclear to ensure that it's either my way or the dry-way (as in: no competition success), but we'll see what the silent takeover brings.

Season 6: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin April - May Fixtures & League Table A patchy end to the season. Traoré got injured in the match against Famalicão and missed the last 6 matches. We missed having a focal point for our attack against Benfica and Porto, although we've got enough quality in the squad that it didn't harm us in the easier fixtures. Tempting though it is to try to create some drama from the dropped points and ooh, I wonder if we won the league, there wasn't any real risk of that. We clinched the title with the win over Farense and I was able to send a quite inexperienced team out to play against Braga to give them some game time; of course, it was Masoud who scored the two goals - we needed some talent out there, after all. Farense did something remarkable in the run-in. Having been terrible all season, they somehow pulled out a run of 5 wins in the last 7 matches to leapfrog Penafiel on 'results between teams'. (Farense beat them 1-0 on the opening day with a 94th-minute winner (yikes)). Penafiel then lost the Playout on penalties (double yikes). We probably deserved to finish top, given how long we spent top of the league. The XG table shows things a bit differently, but part of this is because Traoré scored a lot of headers and headers have crap XG. Defensively, I think it shows the benefit of having a much better goalkeeper this season. A bit more spread to the goals, too, this season. Pogiso Mari doesn't feature on this list, but he scored 15 in all competitions and actually looked like a professional footballer more often than not. As the season wound down, I also did a bit of pre-emptive housekeeping, signing Mozafari, Bucur, Meireles de Azevedo and Marques to new contracts. Some of this was just to ward off any interest over the summer, but they were on rather stupidly low wages for how good they are. Miscellany Amusingly, some of the rejected players from the Youth Intake played (and played well) in the Quarter-Final and Semi-Final as their trials hadn't yet finished. They'd all been sent to the scrap heap by the time of the final, though, so the A-Team stepped up. Linked to this, we had the following announcement a few days after the season ended. I can only assume Porto, Benfica and Sporting have been neglecting their facilities. We haven't, though, and the next phase kicked in around the same time when the board announced that we'll be getting an, um, inventively named new stadium: I'm just gonna assume they'll keep the same signs.

Season 6: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin February - March Fixtures An excellent set of results in the league, plus a fortuitous win in the Cup. The trouncing of Benfica was sweet, and with 3.27xG it wasn't even that overdone. The 5-2 over Arouca saw us hit 4.26xG. The board want 'entertaining football' and we have endeavoured to provide just that. We actually tried to tank the Champions League tie against Milan and played a mostly backup XI, so we could focus on the league. But Pogiso Mari scored after 25 seconds at the San Siro and then Traoré scored in the 93rd minute at home. No such accidents against Man City, who were way better than the 2-6 aggregate suggests. With 7 games to play, we're 5 points clear of Benfica (in 2nd) with a game in hand over them. Youth Intake We were due a dud and a dud was duly delivered Varela looks like he could be good, though. Miscellany I was a little worried when I saw that David Rios wanted a new contract - labelled a Wonderkid and rated as a 'Leading Liga Bwin player' you can imagine my surprise when he agreed the deal below. Speaking of new contracts, the board gave me a new contract, which I accepted even though I'm not sure I'll see it out. Random Player Showcase Amado has had a lot of game time for us this season and has made some nice progress in that time. I did train him to do the old Schmeichel Snr 'fling it a mile' trick, which I'm hoping will be useful. I haven't seen it in any highlights yet but I'm sure it'll look amazing the one time it creates a chance.

Season 6: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin January A nice set of results to start with, including some nice blowouts, before a streaky point against Chelsea (91st minute equaliser, I see you) and a bit of a pummeling against Braga. We did then rack up 3.6xG against Monaco, so it's hard to argue we didn't deserve that win. We have slipped behind Sporting, though. Transfers Aeimsang was our Thai striker. When FC Köln came in for him, he wasn't interested, so I'm sure the fact he's now on a £46k p/w salary is due to how much the club sold him on the city and local culture. (There are addons). We received pretty chunky bids for D'Alessandro and Rios but they were unfazed by me turning them down. Jovičić is a very promising centre-back who I just had to have once I saw him. Meanwhile, Stanić is a very promising striker who I just had to have once I saw him. Max Bexell is the second player this save we've prised away from Barnet's clammy grasp; he's a backup MR/AMR. Pablo Moreno and Mariano Cortés are - following the theme of the last couple of seasons - youngsters from Spain. Cortés cost a bit more than usual, at £1.8m, but I'm hoping we can develop him into someone like Traoré, given that we can't find anyone like him. My scouts and coaches aren't wild about Moreno, but I think he could be great. We signed a few more youngsters, too; again to fill out the youth squads. We have 80 players out on loan.

Season 6: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin November - December A good, if not particularly tricky, couple of months in the league and a good couple of months in Europe. We were predicted to beat Basel (optimistic) and to lose against Milan (fair) but the performance against the Serie A leaders was probably the better of the two. The win against Chaves was probably the most dominant performance in the season-and-a-half we've had in the top tier, while the 5-0 against Académica Coimbra (and the 6 first team players they have on loan from us, ) was enough to ensure we won the group in a competition I couldn't give less of a **** about. We've actually played the first match in January, because I lost track of time during a DM session. Onwards! Random Player Showcase Stolen from a Spanish club for a small fee and has been committing atrocities against defenses in the Portuguese Aveiro U19 Division so far this season. As he should, to be fair - my coaches tell me he's already at Liga Portugal Bwin standard. (I'm trying to keep younger players in the U19/U19-B teams if they're not going to get first team football, and it sucks for everyone else that I've also got good options in the U19 squad.) Anyway, this kid is stupid good. I'm imagining a situation where we have him and Ribera (who's been shredding defenses for Spain's U19 team) up front at the same time.

Season 6: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin September - October Lots of yellow on display. I'm not that fussed about the Champions League, but managing to get draws at least keeps the bank balance happy. Assume that we were lucky against Man Utd and you'll be correct. Assume also, that we deserved to lose against Portimonense and you'll be correct there, too. Our backups aren't as good as our first-choice players, so whenever we need to rotate, things get a bit anxiety-inducing. Masoud has been in good form, but since he gets run into the ground by Egypt during international breaks (as happens to Mozafari with Iran) he's constantly on the verge of being exhausted. Nothing too worrisome right now, but I'm not thrilled with how our defense is playing at the moment. Random Player Showcase We picked up Carsten Wrobel from Dynamo Dresden over the summer for ~£3.5m. We don't need him at the moment, so he's staying with them for the season. He's far too good for the 3rd-tier, but he's playing really well and developing. Having an excellent Winger is very nice when you've got an ambulatory lamppost up top like we do.

It would be good for there to be some staff assistance in understanding transfer offers that human managers (let's call them HMs) receive for their players. It's an area of considerable frustration for some HMs when there's no visible context for why clubs are making the kind of offers they're making. I think there are a couple of different levels of advice here: 1) The News module - particularly during a transfer window - generates lots of information about big clubs looking at players, but I doubt many HMs have the time to wade through that to find out why Lyon (as an example) are bidding for a player they've never shown interest in until now. If the HM is told by a staff member that Lyon have tried signing a bunch of similar players but lost out on all of them, the HM is then in a position to make a more informed choice about how to respond, i.e. accept, reject or negotiate. Or, linked to this, have they recently sold a first team player in the same position, so the HM can intuit that this could be a replacement. Basically, at this level of advice, the game is just summarising already existing information and presenting it to the HM in one place - via the Staff Member. 2) The Staff Member provides some of the hidden information we don't usually get visibility of to help the HM understand what's going on. E.g. if a bigger club is bidding for a player at significantly less than should be received for them, is this because they're hoping to unsettle the player? This sometimes comes up in News items, but doesn't seem to happen consistently. Or is this a club trying to fill out their Youth squads, so if the bid is rejected they'll probably move on soon; or has the player been identified by a scout as being a massive talent so they're really keen to sign him. Obviously, the game knows why an AI manager is bidding for a player, but the HM has to guess. At this level of advice, the game is presenting information that the player doesn't typically have access to (or needs to infer from the info they do have) to support the HM to decide what to do with the offer. This feels to me like something that probably happens in real life. Possibly, the accuracy of this could be linked to the Staff Member's attributes (I was thinking this would be a Director of Football/Assistant Manager kind of job) but I'm 50:50 on that, since the time you'd most need this information is before you can get the best staff for those roles. Eh.

I wouldn't say the transfer system is broken, but there are some AI behaviours that need a bit of working out. I wonder if the game would benefit from a member of the backroom staff (DoF or AssMan) chiming in with a bit of advice for some transfer offers you receive. Say you've got a player and there's been no apparent interest in him all summer and then just before Deadline Day you get a bid from a big club, the staff member could say "Lyon have tried to sign 4 centre-backs this window but lost out on all of them" which you could interpret as them being desperate and it's based on information the game already provides through the News items. Or you could get a terrible bid for a good player and the staff member says "this bid may be an attempt to unsettle your player". (This would not really based on information the game already gives you).

Season 6: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin July-August Transfers It feels weird, having all my incoming transfers fitting on one screen, without me having to scroll. Anyway. No big losses going out. Our captain Esteves' time with us had run its course - he had a year left on his deal and already said he wanted to leave. I was impressed someone paid £4.5m for him, to be honest. Weis was an easy sale - the board wanted more, but the board are idiots; similar deal with Diouck, where there wasn't much of a market for him so we took what we could get. Diouck was good, but we need to move to the next level. Roger Lopez was another steal from the Spanish kiddy leagues, who a few teams came in for; rated very highly, but I think it's an illusion. We'll get 50% ONS, and I might try to cash that next summer. Lots of players out on loan - 67 at the moment (2nd September). The biggest signing for us in terms of cash and importance was Amado Meireles de Azevedo. We needed a new GK, and with VdG getting relegated (not sure how; they had some excellent players) his asking price dropped from £40m (lol) to a more reasonable £8m. Gobble gobble, as they say. Alba was the best centre-back we could find who looked like a long-term option and Padilla is similar, but a bit further away from the first team (he's staying in Honduras for another season). Having said we had a bunch of options in midfield, after players went out on loan, I realised we needed another capable playmaker, and Bruno Campusano was the one we went for. With European matches, I should be able to give him enough game time to keep developing. The other big deals were tying down D'Alessandro and Traoré to new deals. Both are fairly chunky in terms of wages (£35k and £20k p/w respectively), but probably worth it in the long-run. D'Alessandro is our new Captain, too, so it was good to keep him happy. Most of the other players we signed are to fill out the youth teams, although Chambers, Salaun and Yahaya will make a few appearances. Bonus points for the ASPIRE academy in Qatar, for developing Suraj Singh to the point where he was worth taking a punt on. I doubt he'll ever be good enough for us, but a talented Indian centre-back is nothing to sneeze at. Fixtures Poor Porto, having to demean themselves by going through qualification for Europe, and then getting spanked by us on the first day of the league season (sandwiched by European matches). We played really well and deserved to win. Our final goal was :chef's kiss: and so nice I actually clapped while watching the highlights. Not much to clap about in the game against Sporting, though. We've got a bit of a task on our hands to progress in the Champions League, too. Not an easy set of matches. Just as well the board only wanted us to reach the Group Stages (and then were thrilled when we did, because they're idiots).

Season 5: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin April - May Rangers were too good for us in Europe. They're too good in FM generally, but eh. Both results against them were fair. Big wins against Chaves, Nacional and Vitória de Guimarães and some scrappy performances against Farense, Penafiel and Sporting (Traoré with the sneaky 90+4th minute winner, there). And then, of course, the elephant in the room. The elephant-sized 5-5 bonanza against Sporting in Lisbon. A great match, but we absolutely threw the game away from being 2-5 up with 30 minutes to play. So was this enough to win the league? Erm, no. Because Benfica had one of the most ridiculous runs of form in the league that I think I've ever seen from an AI team in FM. Between the start of January and the end of the season, they only failed to win 1 game - against us. As disappointing as it is to fail to win the league with a points total that's usually enough, I can't argue with a 50-ton steamroller like that. We also had a tricky run-in; Sporting and Porto have both been fairly bad this season, but they're still tough teams to beat. Benfica lost in the Allianz Cup final, were knocked out of Europe in the Quarter-Finals and then somehow lost to Penafiel in the Taça de Portugal Placard final. Does that make me feel better for them pipping us to the league? No, but i did laugh when I saw the final score in the Cup final. Token Silverware No idea what this competition is, but whichever member of staff was responsible for it picked a side with a few players from our U23s, U19s and U19-Bs and we beat Porto. Hurrah! The U19-Bs also won the Portuguese U19 Aveiro Division comfortably, and I think that means they get promoted? The U19s finished third in their Championship Group, while the U23s scraped into their Championship Group and then finished last (although I think half the players I'd put in there were out on loan after January, so there's no big surprise there). Random Player Showcase I thought we'd stolen this kid from the Spanish U19 leagues, but actually, we stole him from a 4th-tier team in Spain for the usual £10k sorry-not-sorry fee. He looked good when my scouts gave their "yeah, I suppose" report and lit the U19-Bs on fire when he joined in January. He got called up for the provisional Spanish U20 squad for the Youth Invitational, but picked up an minor injury and was replaced. I gave him his debut from the bench on the final day of the season (he'd played the day before) and he scored and got a pseudoassist (his shot got parried and then tapped in by someone else). One for the "if his potential holds, then holy balls" list, I guess. I'm very excited about this one. Summary Obviously, another good season. The signing of Masoud seemed to reignite our attacking options and the form of Traoré in the back-half of the season was incredible; he scored 25 goals for the season, and 19 came after Christmas. Defensively, too, we improved. I think Driss Pépé's time with us is up - after 3.5 good seasons, he seems to have reached his limit and we need another excellent DC to partner Mozafari. I'm looking for a new DL, but we've got plenty of options at DR. Midfield is already sorted - Dongmo just signed a new contract and we've got about 30 viable options to play whatever roles we need filling. Up front, I'm less sure about right now. I gave Traoré a new deal at the start of the season with a £7.5m MFRC in the hope that someone would come in for him (and I was really hoping someone would by Christmas), but with his recent form, I'm not really sure what to do. He scored lots of headers, but also is pretty good with the ball at his feet and the list of strikers who can do the same that I've found is vanishingly small. We also really need a new GK - Manfred Weis is Mr Inconsistency and it pains me to have to pick him week on week. Plus, the coaching team think he's hit his Potential and that's no good. We're steadily building up depth in the youth teams. We'll have another cull over the summer, get rid of some of the deadwood (hopefully for some cash) and bring in some higher-potential players. Our Technical Director has gone ham on signing youth team coaches, so we've got scope to keep on expanding. Number of players signed this season: 48.

Season 5: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin February - March A couple of months that felt pretty hectic. We've alternated between being excellent and incredibly mediocre. We thoroughly deserved the wins against Benfica, Rio Ave, Moreirense and Vålerenga, but were lucky to get anything from the games against Portimonense, Estoril Praia, Maritimo and Boavista (this one had me shrieking the most at my monitor). We should have lost to Braga by a lot more. In fairness, we struggled with players being unavailable through Asian Cup or injuries (if we can call a cold or the flu as an injury). We very much had to put out weaker teams against Vålerenga to accommodate the big games against Benfica and Braga, but it didn't cost us in Europe. A large part of the success we had in the period is due to our talismanic skyscraper forward Mor Talla Traore, who stepped up to the plate with some terrific form at a time when our Thai striker wasn't available. Squeaky bum time awaits Youth Intake A Preview that promised much and an Intake that delivered. The CA stars don't look quite as impressive as they might, but - genuinely - Shady Masoud is distorting that for everyone. We ended up signing all but I think 4 players. Shout out to Umaro Mané, who has quite possibly the worst set of physical attributes I've ever seen on a newgen at a professional club; I signed him, because he'll make games of piggy-in-the-middle easier for everyone, and you just can't buy that sort of utility these days. Random Player Showcase Albert Bucur - 2nd on the NXGN list - has been with us for a while now. We signed him when he was 16 from a team in the Romania Youth League on the back of him appearing in the Romanian U-18/9 side, and he's now 19. As you can tell, we've put a lot of work into his physicals over the last 3 years and he's now probably our 3rd choice DC. Ideally, I'd like him to have his physicals improve a bit more but I can live with them as they are; my coaches all think he's still got significant room to improve and I'd like to see that improvement coming through in his technical attributes. If he can develop those a bit more I think he could be a really good player.

I've posted this image before, in other threads, but it never stops being hilarious in these discussions: This goalkeeper was godly. An impenetrable barrier. A veritable one-man-army of goal-preventing carnage. Sorry, I lie. This goalkeeper (from a youth-only save) was rubbish. Absolute, unmitigated trash but the best of a completely awful bunch at the time. As a team, we were also absolute, unmitigated trash; our defense particularly so. As a result, we gave away chances like a Tory minister handing out PPI contracts to their friends. Chances for you, chances for you, chances for you. Soooo many chances. And so, Mr Soares up there on an entirely different graph from his peers, looked amazing. As others have said, goalkeepers get a bit of a rating boost for making a save, no matter how easy it is. So as the shots rained in - most of them very poor - he kept making the kind of saves I could make, and getting good ratings. Which gave him confidence, which let him save even more shots. And since our team was rubbish, teams played more attacking football against us which meant more shots for Soares to save (and more high-quality chances for our attackers, who were much better than our defenders).

You can see it on the Finances screen. For me it's in the top-right: So, if I sell a player for £3m, I get £3m back to spend. If it drops to 50%, you get half of that.

Season 5: Lusitãnia Lourosa, Portugal, Liga Portugal Bwin January First up, the transfer window. The ever-beloved Promise module within FM had a 50% success rate this month. Wichai Wongsrikaew had a tantrum because I wasn't playing him as a Central Defender, and I wasn't, because the dude has 8 Jumping Reach. He requested a transfer, so I've sent him to Hoffenheim for a few months. Hopefully he'll have chilled out by the time he comes back. Ahmad Mozafari also had a tantrum because I wasn't playing him as a Ball-Playing Defender, except I was. Unlike Wongsrikaew, though, Ahmad is actually a very important player for our team - much more so, since my scouts were unable to find anyone I could replace him with if I needed to. He's spent the month off doing Asian Cup things, but hasn't really calmed down. He's not going anywhere, regardless. Ronaldo was my 2nd-choice ST last season, but the only competitive goals he scored this season were both in our 4-0 win over Nacional. A couple of teams came in for him and off he went. We signed 13 players. A DR came in to provide competition for whoever wants to take Xavier's spot next season. A couple of DCs came in for small sums - one from Nigeria, one from Bolivia - to provide some depth for our U23s. We raided the Spanish U19 leagues again and this time also picked up a youngster from a French National-3 team. Then there was the bigger stuff. Billy Stenberg was someone my scouts had been raving about for a couple of seasons. I've played FM long enough to know to pay attention when a player from [cracks knuckles] Brommapojkarna is recommended, so after 4 reports in total I decided they weren't yanking my chain and I pulled the trigger: Breakthrough Prospect, I just need to find game time for him. I'd scouted quite heavily (for me) specifically for a striker and Nahuel Ghisleni was the best candidate I found. He's listed as a Winger, but with teams sniffing around Traore, our Thai striker and Ronaldo, I wanted another option up front. And then there's Shady Masoud... Another player I'd been aware of for a while but had been put off by the high price and even higher wages. BUT, I'd identified that 'lack of goals' was the biggest concern (for me, at least) and Masoud was the option available who looked like he could contribute the most to that area of our game. The £10.75m fee was his MFRC and they weren't budging on that, and we had to haggle pretty hard on the wages because I almost threw up when I saw his demands. And then, after we'd actually agreed on the deal, I spent about an hour of real-life time mulling over whether to accept or cancel. I still feel a bit sick just thinking about it. Fixtures Shady Masoud had a debut to remember, with a goal and assist against Porto, and then did sweet FA for the rest of the month. We then re-engaged 'desperate final minute goals' mode to squeak through against Académico de Viseu. The game against Nacional (rock-bottom of the league) looks comprehensive, but all the goals came in the last 22 minutes. Seems redundant to say it was a good month in the league, but it was. We're top of the league with a game in hand over Benfica. Random Player Showcase: Guillermo was someone my scouts recommended a couple of times, but he'd moved from a 4th tier team to a 2nd tier team and then spent a year doing nothing with them before I decided my scouts might be on to something and we spent £200k to get him. He was on loan back in the 4th tier last season, and this season he's in the 2nd tier. His perceived PA has steadily moved up over time and now he looks like he could be really good.

I'll like it when it means Real Madrid, PSG or Man City fail to make the knockouts. Until then, I'll just assume it's rigged like always and ignore it.