[The FM23 Youth Academy Challenge]

Season 3 - Yeggo Foot Senegal

 

my first relegation in probably 15 years! a poor season all around we were just not any where near good enough for last years promotion. I took the decision at the start of the year to jettison 3 of our 4 last 23+ year old starters who were in the last year on contract and Unambitious and stand by the choice. The move to almost all positive trait team will only help in the long run 

 

 

Pre Season Odds

Spoiler

First Call Up

 

Mamours amazing rise

 

 

 

This years intake 4 first team players - all div 2 standard will put us in good stead next year 

 

 

 

Relegated 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[The FM23 Youth Academy Challenge]

Spoiler

Season 2 Preview 

 

Senegal - Youth Rating in Fm22 - 80 

Senegal Top Flight - ranked 30th in Africa , below a lot of our West African rivals, Togo (have risen due to  ASKO doing well in the Conf cup), Mali, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria. 

Yeggo Foot - 5th highest youth facilities in the top 2 flights from what I can see - there are 4 teams in the academies league with same or higher, which should help us

 

What a Season - almost ended in heartache and a 90th minute winner from our hero secured promotion against the league leaders on the final day of the season in dramatic fashion. Our young team was doing so well all season and form deserted us in the final month, to the point that it looked like we might miss out. It is a remarkable turnaround. last season we scraped survival and our first intake looked pretty good, as highlighted we have one of the best academies in Senegal and it paid dividends.

 

Finishing Position 2nd

League Cup - Semi Final - the run included a 7-0 demolition of a top flight team (they were playing kids)

FA Cup - Quarter Final 

 

 

Our star man right back has shown great progress and with a resolute personality will hopefully be a team leader in the future

 

 

This years intake looks promising with a fair few good personalities. We have recently taken on a much better coach who ha better JA JP

 

 

 

End of Season Form and dramatic last day 

 

 

I am honestly quite torn, as much as going up is great, I also think another season with our second intake in the second tier would not have been a bad thing, but we should just about have enough to survive. 

 

 

 

[The FM23 Youth Academy Challenge]

Season 2 Yeggo Foot in Senegal

So finally a database that works has got me excited to continue on this African adventure, but a few things I wanted to touch on, 

 

Senegal - Youth Rating in Fm22 - 80 

Senegal Top Flight - ranked 30th in Africa , below a lot of our West African rivals, Togo (have risen due to  ASKO doing well in the Conf cup), Mali, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria. 

Yeggo Foot - 5th highest youth facilities in the top 2 flights from what I can see - there are 4 teams in the academies league with same or higher, which should help us

 

Database - I have all of Davetheeditors African leagues loaded on View-Only and i think about 15 of the top European leagues, with all players from Africa loaded, only a database of about 55000, i tried to run it with all of Africa playable but my old laptop almost died. I have been monitoring the transfers every month and there is very little movement to Europe so far, I know that view only reduced transfers but will be interesting to see if this changes over time, it will be one of our only sources on income in the whole game!

 

 

After scraping survival in season 1 and having a great intake, we cleared out all the players who were 1-2 stars and over the age of 23, and are predicted on opening day to be a solid mid-table side, but the transfer window does not close until the middle of Jan, so plenty of time for the other teams to sign players. The one big downside to this save is the 5 month off season and no holidays so lots of friendly games played, and we held our own against top flight teams. 

Outs

Spoiler

 

Team

Spoiler

 

Predictions

Spoiler

Apologies for the non end of season ramble just wanted to get my thoughts down and glad to finally be sinking into a modern FM, its been quite a culture shock from FM17  and Fm12 which I have been my go to games for the last decade!

[The FM23 Youth Academy Challenge]

I could not get the database I was using for Africa to work, the registration windows were missing the season causing chaos, so I finally managed to find one that did what I needed, and started up again in Senegal. We have every African nation and most European nations loaded on View Only. After holidaying for a Season, we took over Yeggo, who were predicted lower mid table. but with very few players and only 1 striker with 3 finishing it was going to be a tough season, but we start with decent facilities. The one downside to this database vs Timos is no prize money unless you get into the continental cups and losing mass amounts of money. 

 

 

 

 

 

We started the season in terrible form and over the course of the first 9 games had 5 red cards, without the ability to make change we were up against it, but a 6 game run over December/Jan gave us a bit of a buffer and there was 2 teams really struggling below us. Pretty much all of our goals had to come from set plays and it was a real struggle. We won the game below 1-0, might be the best fm I have ever had.

 

 

The intake was so good, it actually lowered the ratings of my first team and gives me a bit of hope to push into mid table next year, terrible personalities though, to say the striker was an upgrade might be an understatement 

 

 

[The FM23 Youth Academy Challenge]

Welcome to my new Challenge - Senegal the start of a multi-fm challenge across Africa, if I fail I move on but the aim is to tick off as many as possible over the next ..... years. My Ivorian save was corrupted for some random reason so I am hoping this does not plague me again

 

 

 

 

Senegal's top league is currently ranked 29th so one of the lower ones in this journey, and we start in the lowest of the low the only 4th tier in the database, is any of these lads know how to kick a ball I will be shocked. Released 8 players on arrival to trim the squad of the worst of the worst personalities. Going to be an interesting ride. 

 

[The FM23 Youth Academy Challenge]

Had to give up on the Ghana save there is an issue with the database were every team has a massive squad of players but not registered anyone 

[The FM23 Youth Academy Challenge]

Season one is in the bag (weekend off!). and boy have we messed up. It is way way too early for us to go up, but we just would not concede, probably helped by the fact our best players were our keeper and right back. We did not score a lot and conceded even less, started the season hoof ball, but soon realised we were better than I thought and changed. 

Got our first upgrades and badges 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Intake means nothing, most of these guys wont make it, over half were really bad personalities. As soon as the season finished we lost our top keeper to a team staying in the division below and teams are circling our other good players. Staying in the second tier will be tough but if we can hang in for a year or 2 whilst our young core grows it will be ideal as there is a bit of prize money for avoiding going down. 

 

 

[The FM23 Youth Academy Challenge]

The 3rd Tier of Ghana is very interesting, over 100 teams plus multiple 2nd tier leagues. The 3rd tier has amateur teams (us), semi pro and pro teams along with all the famous academies we were constantly raiding in my Togo save. We were predicted to finish 102nd but it means nothing. Teams at this level  get decimated overnight, lose 6 or 7 players and dont promote the youth players up for whatever reason. To start i trimmed the squad of all the 24+ 1 stars and the worst personalities which left me with a very young team but a promising start

 

 

 

  

[The FM23 Youth Academy Challenge]

 

Hey All

 

I posted a couple of years ago, but as 25 year FM player fell out with the game for a while and moved over to OOTP and immersed myself in baseball, which has taken a few years to get to grips with. A couple of years of work priorities taking over and having a low self belief/determination personality have dragged me down (call it a midlife crisis!). Having rekindled my love of FM, I have been playing a lot of FM17 recently and doing the youth challenge with Kettering, but wanted to jump back into the fray. I love the Fm 15-17 interface and ease of use and found the newer games a bit bloated compared, but am jumping back in on 22 to see how it goes. 

= 

One of my first saves back was in the Togo leagues so wanted to try an African save, with the knowledge it will very difficult to complete, but f un none the less. With a complete lack of money even in the higher levels to improve anything I will be focusing on personalities and culling very strict those that dont have at least a neutral. Watching Lokis save, this may not be doable unless we get promoted fairly quickly as we could lose our entire team every year. I have all African leagues from Timo loaded (no Togo!) on view only apart from....

 

I had a lot of choices with 8 Div 3 divisions, and finishing bottom, Hotspurs, West Ham and the mighty Juventus.

 

 

 

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

Having managed to get past Olympiakos, we are in the final qualifying stage, I literally got up and shouted at the end. These lads are playing far above themselves in all these big games, most of them were playing lower league slovak football 3 years ago

 

Just a shame we will need to win away from home! 

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

Start of season 2

 

We won the cup after an easy run in season 2 so managed to get into Europe very early in the game, my db had all players from continental competitions and large, so all of the teams we can face have players. An unlucky 2nd Qual draw gave us Luzern, who finished 2nd in the non playable Swizz league and have several 5mil players to our 100-200k. Further we had the Czech-Slovak cup which I think is between cup winners? 

 

Slovako completely outplayed us and won a deserved 3-0, on to Luzern and away from home we managed to sneak a goal, back at home they lined up in a 3-4-1-2, and we took advantage with a ball sprayed out wide and crossed to the Mihalik to head in. Going through AET. A great start. No chance we get past the next round though...

 

 

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

End of Season 2 - we stay up and win the cup to qualify for Europe. Some of the early youngsters are coming on well, but look to be hitting a ceiling. We are almost a million in debt so if we can scrape a few wins in EC2 would be a great help.

 

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

End of Season 2 - we are mired in a relegation battle and this happens - in Europe already - albeit for maybe a short trip! We had an easy run only facing one other top flight side the whole way through.

 

edit ps sorry for the stuipdly slow progress, work has taken over for the last 4 weeks, its been eat, sleep, work hoping to ease off soon

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

Having an interesting season - nice to get a day of FM in - bah work! 

We are struggling to score in the top division, but making plenty of chances, just our putting away is not working. I am considering dropping our only out and out ST Spillar and moving in one of the promosing IF who has decent finishing and composure with room to grow

A fun little aside, I have all players from European continental loaded (77000ish), which led to signing Mart Poom of arsenal fame as a GK coach, since then we have filled up on estonians, since that image, Vittek has been replaced by and Estonian and the B team manager as well, lets see if we get any Estonians in the intake

One thing I have not enjoyed about these Czech/Slovak saves is the 2 week break in the summer and 3 months in the winter, but if after the winter break you go heavy on physical to get the players fit they go mental.

 

8 CCC and still drew, shows we are creating, just need to learn to finish

 

But next game in the cup against a II Division side, all clicked, Quinton is our 4th choice CM, but in the game above he came on for half an hour and created 3 changes so I stuck him in, 2 30 yard screamers and a penalty. We are into the QF, there is 1 non league team still in, and no Slovan, a pretty good chance we could win it if we beat fellow relegation candidates in March

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

So I have a problem I have not decided how to fix yet. In season one we got promoted and have started this year well, unbeaten in the first 4. However.... I have been getting a LOT of messages about players losing determination. The first intake we had contained 5 fortuna liga potential players and they all had good determination and 3 had professional based personalities. So having read @_Ben_ 4 threads over the last week it has made me think. See the picture below from our hierarchy there are 8 players with 9 or below det who are going to drag down the youngsters, which will then have a knock on effect when they become team leaders in a few years on the next generation. We are not playing poorly enough to be fining players regularly. 

 

So the options - live with it 

 Sell some of the team leaders who are also our best players and probably get relegated.

I know its early on into the game and could be fixed down the line, but I feel the decision I make here could make a big difference for the next 15 years of the team.

 

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

Ive got to say I've always been sceptical when I read first season success in this threads, but wow what a season we have just had, its the best fun I've had playing FM in a while. After the Xmas break we tore through the last batch of games dropping only 4 points and scoring for fun. Next season I am confident we will be in or around the bottom by the split of the league but we have more than enough quality to stay up. Team wise we have 3 players who are considered 'decent Fortuna Liga', and our new crop of intake contained 4 5* potential, which means they could hopefully be in or around that level in a few years. This save is very different to my previous in that we have a solid foundational team so a lot of the youngsters will settle for B team action next year with the top 4-5 in the main squad as rotational options, rather than being forced straight in because we needed them. 

The intake also increased the determination of the squad by a good chunk with 8 13+ players in the batch. 

 

All round great season, played good football, bedded in 3 of the 0 Year players and phased out 2 of the older players. Finances looking ropey, but we have an average attendance of over 3k so should be fin if we keep wages in check. I did notice my DOF was managing the intake for some reason, think I have fixed that now,

 

 

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

The first season is going far better than expected, whilst the lads struggled with my tactics for the first 5 games (none of the front 3 scored), we seem to have clicked and making massive progress. Looking at the league table we are a very deserved 2nd place and 8 unbeaten, near the top of possession, chances created and goals conceded. The only concern is that my best player is a 35 year old right back, with great crossing and set pieces who we will struggle to replace next year. Initially we started with a 16 year old GK from the holiday year as an u21 has to start every game, but he has kept 7 clean sheets so keeps his place. The other 2 16 year olds have started plenty of games, but mentoring is making zero impact on both of their unambitious personalities, both have had top tier bids so must have potential but will likley struggle to hit it with that. Feels so much better than the struggle as Blansko to be able to put out a team to attack every now and again

 

  

All 3 versions of this tactic have been used, and are interchangeable but still need a bit of tweaking as we struggle to get out striker into play in some game, Duda has a 'get forward' trait and has scored 3 screamers already from a BWM role, plus he is our team leader in key passes. Our 2 wide players are not creating many chances per 90 but the WBs are which sounds about right. Whilst we are creating chances, converting them could be improved. Having a Poacher in this tactic is a bit of an aberration I will look to correct in future years, but none of our players in that forward line can press, pass or tackle so its better to just have them on the end of crosses for now.

 

 

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

Attempt Number 2 - so after the failure of Blansko I am starting out again. The issue I had there was Poor or basic everything and no way to generate any money to improve anything it was hard to survive in the top 2 divisions of Czhechia. I had 2 good Synot league potential players in 10 Seasons, just was never going to happen. 

 

So on to the next club, I loaded up a fairly big database to give myself some options (most of central/east Europe) plus all players from top teams in Europe to add realism (fm20). I settled on going just over the border to Slovakia, FC Tartan Presov, they have much better facilities, a 30 man squad, a B team and were predicted to finish in the top half of the league (this changed when the 5 loan players from the previous season left). The had been fairly active in the Jan on the holiday year signing 5 players. It was a toss up between these or the Serbian league and went with Slovakia as I expect it to be tough, most of these teams are basically feeder teams to the good old Czech Republic across the border.

 

Another big plus is 2 of the holiday regens look very tasty for this level and I am hoping we can tie them down asap ad top tier teams have already placed bids for both. They have pre arranged deals for there 17th birthday after which I will be instantly offering new deals with options. 

 

Squad personality is not great a lot of balanced, but give it 3-4 years to filter out the low DET and ill have that sorted. 

Made 1 rookie error, cleared out all the staff and whilst hiring the new ones asked for my first badge, when obvs i can't be spared from training, woops.

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

10 Seasons in - no win in 12 - SACKED. The most painful sacking of my FM years

 

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

The Worst Intake of all time - good lord . End of Season 10 in Blansko holding on for dear life at the foot of the table - and this is my reinforcements lol

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

Just want to check something. My best player refused to sign a new contract but no one else came in for him on a free, so he currently on a rolling month to month. I assume I'm good to use him until he leaves or caves in and signs 

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

Busy week at work so slowed right down

FK Blansko

Season 9 - 1st year in the Synot Liga

We had a lucky promotion last year with our start striker firing us way above where we should be, and this season was always going to be hard. To put it in to perspective our board signed a 5 year sponsorship in year 5 worth 350k, which ends after season 10, the next lowest in the league is a million more than us and we are losing money every month as a result. Further to this our ground was not up to scratch so we are sharing with FK Slovacko - over 100km away. 

 

We struggled all season, and had a few hammerings, but luckily Vicktoria were god awful with a -70 goal difference and locked up the automatic relegation spot, whilst before we xmas break we pulled off a few results such as an away draw with Sparta. After the break we were not good in an way and were pulled right into the battle. By the time the relegation group came around we were 8 points adrift of safety, but won 4/5. The reason we stay is once again is Ross Bird who finished top scorer in the league, which is just ridiculous for a player from our team, he scored 60% of our goals. 

From the year 8 class we had 2 wingers who were promising and had both been getting games, until one broke his leg and one fractured his skull so will likely never be seen again. On the one big downside of the note our one player who is close to top tier ability Brazilian RB Harrison Cleiton is leaving us this summer after refusing to sign a new contract, I could not sell him last year as really needed him to help the fight to stay up and hoped that another year in the top flight would convince him to stay.

Still Poor Facilities and Youth, not a single uprgrade in 9 years, this really has been a slog with Blansko, and will not get an

y easier for a while, there is just no money in the czech leagues to upgrade anything. We did get our first recruitment upgrade in 5 years, to average and somehow the board have decided to look into buying a new stadium. If after year 10 we can get that little bit more sponsor money and in years 10-12 sneak in the the 6-10th European playoff slot we could take off, but unlikely!

 

Intake was better personality wise than we have had for a few years. Need a new RB and we are sorely lacking in attacking options 

 

 

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

FK Blansko Season 8

Apologies for the quick update first time home in 3 weeks so got a backlog of a few seasons

8 Years and we..... are in the Synot Liga. What a season we started off on fire and by the xmas break were top of the league, which put me in an awkward spot; as we have poor everything the only way to improve players is to play them and I just could not risk it, which meant we faded at the end and only had 2 wins in the last 8, hanging on to the playoffs by GD only. Ross Bird destroyed the league with 19 goals in 30 games and won Player and Young Player of the Season, along with scoring and 87th minute winner in the away leg of the playoffs. (Yet he is still not a club icon!!!) One of the downsides of the playoff system is that we went straight into pre season without a break

The intake was much better with a few promising first team prospects (one of which scored from the bench in the playoffs). Sova is already better than our 2 mainstay CM and just needs a bit of retraining and game time.

Checked on my massive list of poached players and one of them is touted as the next Jan Koller which is really annoying!

We are nowhere near good enough to stay in the league, the aim for seasons 9 and 10 are to avoid the one automatic relegation spot and fight the playoffs, at the end of season 10 our really low sponsorship ends and we should get a big increase, along with the new 10 times bigger stadium we are renting. At the minute we are still losing close to a million a year so no upgrades for at least the next 2 year. This will be a massive battle, we should never have gone up but rode a close tight squad along with a beast of a finisher. Finally Every single player apart from our best (RB Brazilian Cleiton who, who wants to go to be a bigger club ) has signed a new 3 year contract so even if we go down should be able to keep most of them. Cleiton has now surpassed Bird as our best player, and is considered good enough for the Synot Liga

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

FK Blansko Season 7

 

So as in my earlier post we had a rapid start and was top after 7 games, bearing in mind we have finished 14th in 4 of the previous 6 seasons. A few factors played into this, a cull of some of the deadwood and a settled first 11, who 8-9 are now turning 21-22 and finding more consistency is a bit part. Further to this even though we still have a weak squad compared to the rest of the division I firmly believe the dynamics play a big part and we now have 10 influential + players who play most weeks, and the team leaders have a good 'DNA' fighting back in games when we are down. 

Another part is the change in tactics, our best player is a Poacher so from playing cautiously for the first 6 seasons we switched to a positive fast paced, aggressive in your face power tactic, which involves getting the ball to break to him at all times with supporting wingers, and making another focus on set plays (the players have an additional session every Monday) This meant we went from worst scorers in the league to the 5th best and Bird was joint top scorer in the league, but we also let a lot in, often from the opposition cutting in from the wing, which I have tried to fix by playing a bit wider. The other downfall is the I cannot find a good CM, so we often lose the ball between the back and the front line (our BBM has played 170+ games and has 5 goals)

The Main reason for the improvement is the beast Ross Bird, he will take us to the Synot Liga one day, I dearly hope. As you can see the squad is very lopsided with 3-4 key players and a lot of supporting cast. due to the fact we have .5* facilities, but the best coaching in the division, we are relaying on those players with good determination to make them selves good, which is why my GK was tagged as 2H but has survived where many others have not as he is resolute. Seasons 8-9 are to carry on the progress and try to get closer to the playoffs, after which a few of the top players contracts end and they want to go to bigger clubs. Im hoping if we can get close by then that they will stay, as we can push on in season 10. Maybe wishful thinking, I might be stuck here forever!

We did fall away at the end of the season and finish 7th, but we broke, Highest Position, Most Goals for club and Most Points. (we also broke our own league yellow card record, and our foul column is fairly impressive. 

The intake was fine, no one stood out, the 5*s were all pretty poor with poor personalities which I struggle to change with. A couple have progressed to the first team squad, and are in a mentoring group to try and force some change, HOYD was changed after the season. 

[The FM21 Youth Academy Challenge]

Erm well this is not how the table should look - 11 points above the drop though.  Our RECORD number of wins from seasons 1-6 is 7 for a whole season