briandonahue2

When hired by HJK in Finland I knew the board set a required goal of winning the league. As such, I completely understood their disappointment in my finishing 2nd in my first year with the team, even though we were in contention to win up until the last game of the season. We finished 2nd (having finished 4th the year prior to my hiring) with 54 points (42 the year before). HJK is a storied club, but they had only won the league once in the past 5 years, having placed, in order, 8th, 6th, 1st, 4th, and now 2nd. Still, I recognized the goal was to win, and it made sense there would be disappointment. What I was not expecting was the unanimous, borderline angry assessment of my first year in charge. Despite the 12 point, 2 position, 26 goal improvement, all possible parties saw the season as a massive failure. In the 7 in-game years since I started the save, our point total was the 4th highest point total achieved in Finland's top division. The team we lost to finished with the 2nd highest total in the past 7 years. Nonetheless, immediately following the season I was alerted that the Supporters and Board were very disappointed with our club vision progress and that my team wanted a meeting as they were unhappy with the club situation. The group of prominent players were angry about not winning the league (though no player was promised a title), with one player going as far as to say "I can't let this go, you're ruining careers here. I'm rapidly losing faith in your ability." I was listed as having an insecure job position and the board quickly invited me in while warning my job was under serious threat, asking "we would like to know why you think the team have performed so badly." Though I can think of challenges that occurred like losing our star striker midseason due to a release clause that I did not negotiate, overall it was hard to consider the season as having gone "so badly." I was frustrated by the seemingly overboard reaction, but reminded myself that the game saw the goal as required, and there was not room for nuance beyond that. However, my frustration turned to confusion as I continued to get oddly misguided comments about decisions I made in the season review. HJK was a team that was 1 million over payroll budget when I arrived, having recently spent a record 3.2 million pounds on a player who was now playing for our reserve team before a team in Luxembourg finally purchased him as an Impact Sub for 100k after I agreed to pay half of his salary. Despite their free spending, I was given an F rating on a transfer by the board because of a high transfer fee of 84 thousand pounds. It would have been difficult to find a fee much lower that wasn't a free transfer. This 84 thousand pound player went on to be our Fan's player of the season as well as the signing of the season, having made 30 appearances with a 7.16 average rating. I signed another player for 195k pounds who had 4 goals and 3 assists in 17 appearances, and I was again given an F for paying "over the odds" for the player. At the end of the season review, the summary talked about how we routinely performed subpar, and that it was a disappointing season that fans would want to forget. We improved to 16-6-5 with 53 goals scored after going 10-12-5 with 27 goals scored the year before I arrived. I know the goal was to win the league and we very, very nearly did it, earning enough points to have won the league 4 of the past 7 seasons. I expected the board to be disappointed, and I even accepted that given their (not-so-recent) history as a perennial champion perhaps there would be some frustrating overreaction. But in total, from the board to the supporters to the players to the press, the reaction began to feel weird and unrealistic, and clearly the kind of thing that I will be asked about in every interview for the rest of this save. It crossed a realism line for me with the severity and tone of the reactions and complete inability to recognize that growth had occurred. Even understanding the game is never going to recognize nuances like losing star players to previously set release clauses or joining a team a million pounds over payroll budget due to previous poor management, I have a difficult time reconciling that every party is upset and disappointed beyond their ability to see the significant growth shown by the team this year. Uploading the file as BDonahue - What is Going on Here and including some screenshots. Thanks guys, appreciate y'all.

Signed a keeper who agreed to a backup role during the summer transfer window. We are only 5 games into the season and his tenure with the team and he blamed me in the press for his national team snub, despite being a 33-year old with 5 career caps who hasn't appeared for his national team in 3+ years. Specifically, it states he "has not been a regular for his club side of late," which seems incongruous with his short time on the team and agreed-upon backup keeper role. It doesn't seem to have affected our relationship at this time (he was my #1 at a previous club), but the communication felt odd given his age, limited national team history, his recent signing, and his agreed upon playing time. Uploading a save titled "bdonahue2 - blamegame". Thanks guys. BD

Uploading a save titled "bdonahue2 - Can't Request B Team Staff Additions" Managing at Club Brugge, their Club NXT B team has presented some strange staffing quirks. Despite retaining user responsibility of hiring and firing all Club NXT staff, computer-generated offers are still made to certain B Team staff positions and the signings are confirmed automatically. Interestingly, the hires are often made for positions with 0 spots allowed, such as a B Team loan manager. No inbox message appears when the signing is confirmed, I find out either by catching the offer in progress via the transfer screen (I can withdraw the contract offer at this point, but they just make another offer), or by seeing the new staff member on the staff overview screen. Another issue is there is no option to request changes to B Team staffing numbers as there is for the senior and U18 squads. This problem became more prominent when the Board recently reduced the B Team staffing numbers, despite coming off a title win and recent cash influx. After contract expirations, this left the B team down 3 coaches, despite the board hiring unnecessary positions such as loan manager. Without being able to request staff additions, this creates an issue where any prospect going through our B team is subject to a worse training environment. I am also unable to add B Team players to senior team training units, I can only do that with U18 players. Would love any insight on this and hopefully a fix. I have run into a handful of B team quirks in FM23 and they turn what could be an asset to our club into a problem. Thanks guys, appreciate all you do.

"Can you speak about the relationship between you and ___________" does not seem to take into account the actual relationship status that is provided as a resource when the question is asked. I recognize that chatting directly with other coaches is rare and this question requires a bit of imagination when a relationship does exist or you've at least managed against each other a few times, but for relationships categorized as "none," I think any answer other than the neutral "I don't know him but I respect him as a head coach and hope to get to know him more" is an awkward response to give. I think an answer discordant with the relationship status would potentially hurt a relationship with another coach. It is too bad because in lieu of an established relationship, this neutral answer for this question is actually a fair, well-written response and a great option to have. The specific scenario I am currently in really accentuates the inappropriateness of any other answer (screenshot included) during this press conference. I am an American manager who was hired by Blackburn just a few days prior. This is my first job in England and my first pre-match presser; I have not yet managed a single game in the country and have not faced or dealt with a vast majority of its managers in any capacity. The press nonetheless asks me what my relationship is with Rotherham manager Paul Hurst and I can see there is "none," which makes complete sense. I provided the "neutral" answer, the entire press became neutral or expressionless, and the question was reiterated despite there not being another appropriate response to give. The overall reaction to the press conference ended up being slightly negative because of my response to this question. With the relationship status being listed as "none" during the presser and having just landed in England days prior, I feel expressing publicly that I either enjoy every time we get to have a chat, have a philosophically-driven friendship with him, that he reciprocates a respect I happen to have for him, or that we stay out of each other's way would easily be taken as dishonest by the opposing manager, and probably sort of weird if we are being honest. Realistically, I think any other answer in this specific scenario would move the relationship status to "distant," or, if it existed, "deeply confused." It is also probably far from a scenario where the press or public would insist a more substantive relationship must exist, especially when the neutral answer matches the relationship status and doesn't come across as particularly evasive. If the neutral answer as written IS to be taken as the avoidant answer regardless of relationship status, then perhaps an option akin to "I am a fan of his work" should exist in addition to waxing poetic about our friendship and calling him out WWE-style. Thanks guys, appreciate all that you do.

Managing FC Cincinnati in MLS, I have full responsibilities over transfers and contracts. A trade agreed upon by both teams in negotiations results in 2 identical messages being sent stating "Cincinnati do not want to follow up their interest regarding their proposed trade offer." Not sure if there is a legit issue the messages aren't identifying or if the trade is randomly falling through without reason. Previous failed trades have stated a specific reason, such as the other team having too many players of a certain MLS registration category. Uploaded save as "bdonahue2 - MLS Trade Falls Though"