TangoFM

First signing for the club in January. My first choice and only solid right back option, Sivis, is heading off to African Cup of Nations so I really needed some cover, a cost-effective loan deal suits both parties. Below you can see four players that have left the club, all outsiders around the first team squad but none have made many appearances. I want to shift some dead weight and get some wages off the books and raise a small amount of cash.

Local pride! The tenth round of the French Cup paired us against our fierce local rivals, Brest. Our first match against any of our aforementioned Brittany rivals. Brest manager Eric Roy well and truly embarrassed himself in the press both pre and post-match and we completely dominated them on the pitch. "You started it!" Nice to get one up on him and our bitter rivals. Youth Intake Things are looking good. Particularly with these three - Moussaoui, Leon, Quere

Thanks - although we aren't quite there yet... Only PI is 'sit narrower' on the LB.

A bromance is blossoming between myself and Mehdi Merghem. In truth, he was somewhat shoehorned into play as a centre midfield on attack in my setup, to allow for Hugo Picard and Amine El Ouazzani to play in the starting winger positions. He's hit the ground running with a number of goals scored and assist. (I don't have the exact figure as I'm too far in the future of the save) but the way he's playing has been truly impressive, he's the most influential player in the side. No doubt. Squad building It's my natural instinct to give younger players a chance, it's in my DNA. I tend to favour them, seek them out on purpose, there's something rewarding about developing this type of player. Upon taking over I immediately noticed these older players, I tend to have unreasonable thoughts when it comes to players 30 or over. The top three players in this list are in the last year of their contracts so I'm losing value, I won't be able to sell them to reinvest and I feel uncomfortable with that. Of course, it's natural that any squad takes time to 'make mine' but these thoughts pop in my mind and I know they are unreasonable. But I need to understand why I have each player on the books. What's their role? How are they helping us? and how are we helping them? What's the plan for each player? In the case of these four players, all of them would most likely be starters under an AI manager but with me in charge, they have all been replaced by younger, higher-potential players. Barthelmé was replaced by the aforementioned El Ouazzani. Courtet by Siwe, Manceau by Sidibe and Lemonier by Riou. I'm focusing on Courtet and Manceau being effective for our tutoring setup but they will be making most appearances from the substitutes bench. One thing I'll manage is the amount of starts, as they are older players, they will also be influential players. Any upsets could throw out any harmony. In addition, these three younger players have been promoted and will bring some depth to the midfield. On the pitch, we are flying.

Wow, just wow. What a start to life in Brittany. Here's how we line up, pretty simple 4-3-3 but it's also the first time I've used an AF for a few version of the games so a little shift for me. A deeper post to follow about the save soon!

Intro I'm going to be completely open with you. I lost my love for FM a few years ago and have just been playing out of habit. I wasn't engaged, I was just going through the motions. Interest waned and before this year, I've hadn't touched the game for months. Next revelation, I sometimes go back to my favourite game threads on this forum, to read them through rather than pickup any book from my shelf - nostalgia hits hard, and I long to be rekindled with the game I've played since CM98/99. So with that in mind and inspired by @_Ben_'s 'Swiss Army Knife' thread - I'm back. I must admit I have no idea how long it'll last. I've not had a long-term successful save in a number of versions of this wonderful game. But I'm 'into' this one right now. With FM24 re-installed I got to it. But who to manage? Keep things simple. Don't overthink it. Where have you had the most success as a virtual manager? France. What type of save do I want to have? To build a semi-decent club into a club that has success in developing talent, with a story, a focus. Trophies are not going to be the measure of my success, my aim is to enjoy the process of developing the club as a whole. So here we are. Teye Mvunu is the alias I have taken for this save. A ex-professional. Malian international turned manager. A traditional manager, inspired by the likes of Arsene Wenger and has the style to manage the whole club - to leave it in a better place than when he arrived, not just coach the players. Why Guingamp? The French league is called 'the league of talents' and with good reason. I wanted to start outside of the top league and I feel Ligue 2, is a great league to start. Many strong clubs exist there and many ex-top tier clubs too. I feel Guingamp, who are predicted to finish 8th by the media provide a solid base to build upon but are not expected to be promoted straight away. The likes of Bastia, Amiens, Caen, Ajaccio, Valenciennes, ASSE and Troyes all will battle it out to reach the promotion playoffs. It's a very competitive league. The aim is of course to reach Ligue 1 but in time, my natural style of building clubs is to build around younger players, I want to build a solid team for when we're promoted but that might take two or three years. The board are projecting promotion in my fifth season, so no pressure there. Also some good news as they want me to build the clubs youth system and play entertaining football. Seems like we share some values there. Interestingly the board want to 'be competitive' against Brest when we played them also, nothing like abit of local rivalry. Local rivalry is something we have plenty of, and will be another feature of this save. Brittany, a hot bed of football talent. Rennes, Nantes, Lorient and Brest are all from the area and all play their football in the top tier. We are, at the moment, the lowest big Brittany club. We want to change that. My idea is that not only will we build a team with strong young high potential players, it would be cool to have those based close to the club, in Brittany. Inspired by Ben, for sure. The rough plan, mix home-grown and Brittany players with West-African talents, inspired by my manager alias. Half inspired by FC Nordsjaelland, the Red Bull model, and others. A true way to become self sustaining and profitable for smaller clubs. That's it for now, more soon!

Here goes my first save since my launch save with Randers, looking forward to getting stuck in again and heading back to where I seem to feel most comfortable, France. Focusing on homegrown talents, from the club, from Brittany with a sprinkle of West Africa thrown in. Allez les rouge et noir! 🔴⚫️

I had made all my subs and my goalkeeper was injured mid-game, I put David in goal for 25 minutes and he was miffed by it enough to complain the next day. Doesn't seem right to me for him to complain about being played out of position.

1st December 2023: Season One Confession time...I am now playing a new save file compared to the first post in this thread. I had accidentally used a save file from my research that had only Denmark's top two tiers loaded alongside a small database so I have started afresh with a large database and all leagues loaded from Belgium, Denmark, England, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden. The save, however, has started in the same positive light as my first one. You can see my fixture list here and have a good idea of how the games are going, we started strongly with big wins over OB and Hvidore IF but that was followed by 3 defeats in the 4 matches in August. A few tweaks to how we lined up, aiming to find that balance between scoring goals, possession and protecting our own goal we have subsequently gone on a 12 match unbeaten run, including 9 wins. That run leaves us in 2nd place with 6 matches left to play before the league splits. Away from the on-pitch success, we've had some challenges and continue to face some challenges around our squad building. when I took over the squad, I had 12 players who had expiring contracts, I have been successful in renewing 8 of those players, including a few where I'm just protecting their values as I don't want to lose them on a free. However, 4 prominent members of the first team are now considering their options, we are approaching January and their contracts expire in June. I have to think about what income I can gain for them during the January window and also weigh up how much of a loss they would be to the side for the last months of the season? Here are the four in question, Patrick Carlgren, our first-choice goalkeeper and team leader. A very solid option between the sticks for our goalkeeper and we would have a big drop in quality without recruiting a new 'keeper here. However, recruiting here does give us an opportunity to bring a 'keeper in who is more comfortable with the ball at their feet. Alhaji Kamara, our first-choice striker option, for me he's a high-quality pressing forward and he's shown that by scoring 11 goals in 10 (3) starts for us. He will turn 30 soon so I'm sure he would be moving on within a few seasons regardless but it's always nice to extract some value out of your best players, and that financial side is key for our aims of the club. Our replacements for Kamara are the last two players on this list, all three of my strikers are considering their options, just great. Here are the last two, Marvin Egho and Stephen Odey. I thought it also time to introduce some of the players that I'm taking a positive opinion of, meet William Kaastrup, Mustapha Isah and Mads Enggård. Three players that were all in the first-team squad at Randers when I took over but have played more of a role in my side that originally planned. Kaastrup owns the left-back spot, Isah is developing nicely as an inside forward in the AML slot and Enggård is the first-choice in the CM position. All three youngsters are performing well and developing nicely, a key part of our club strategy is to give young players minutes and these three will be the epitome of that. If we look even younger, I can introduce you to Andreas Hoyer, Sabil Hansen and Magnus Zacho, three players I've promoted from the youth team to train with the first-team and play matches for the B team. I have high hopes for Zacho in particular, although I'd love that Determination up higher! Hoyer is developing as a left back, rather than centre-back due to my options there, his natural fitness quality too. I'm excited to see how these guys progress. - As I've now reached December, my thoughts turn more to squad building, scouting and recruitment - I'm aiming to give an overview of my setup in the coming days which will most likely be quite cathartic for me and I imagine a good mind dump. Thanks for following!

I'm really interested in your tactical approach as it's pretty much the opposite of what I tend to go for, enjoyed seeing you spot issues and tweak them, hope to see more of that. I look forward to following along further. Do you think that tweaking tactics more often, is going to be necessary in FM24? Will we have to be more focused on how the opposition plays?

Great start Matty, will follow this with great intrigued.

Great start, really enjoy the way you take us through your 'live' thoughts as you play. Fingers crossed your DoF looks after you...

Will be in this thread as I'm managing Randers in Denmark, I have a thread in the game updates forum but will keep an eye on this one too.

Intro A new game version has me crawling back to FM with a heightened desire to find a save that sticks with me after I didn't really find that during FM22 and FM23. With life getting in the way, a new job and two young kids to manage it was difficult, but with work being quieter during the winter I immediately jumped on FM24 upon early access release, keen to crack on. As with everyone, I have a specific way I like to play FM, for me I enjoy the building of teams and developing players towards their potential. So recruitment and training is a focus for me - I prefer to keep my tactical approach quite simple and take inspiration from real-life examples - I tend not to focus too much on in-depth analysis and data. I really enjoy taking charge of small to mid-sized clubs and developing them, finding the best way to influence the youth intakes and focusing on home-grown talents, and trying to supplement them with bought talents who no doubt will use the club as a stepping stone. I like to manage realistically with key focuses and like my clubs to make money. It's these topics and reasons that I found myself heading Randers (pronounced rah-nuh rs) in this game version. The team nicknamed The Horses hence the thread title, are a middle-of-the-table Danish Superliga with big potential. First of all, the Danish league is a league full of talented young players, filled with "fallen giants" like Brondby and Copenhagen and some well-developed clubs like Nordsjaelland and AGF - it's a league that enables younger talents to have minutes, to allow successful clubs to head into European competitions and enables profit to be made, selling players into the big leagues. The league also runs during the same calendar as the main European leagues, unlike Norway or Sweden which I find easier to manage. Randers have a solid squad with a couple of high-potential players and that was enough to give them the edge over other clubs I was looking at. They have good facilities but not the best and overall they have a good base in all areas for me to make my mark and build upon. Meet Filip Bundgaard, one of the main reasons I chose Randers for my Beta save - a real jewel in the Randers crown and someone I can build my team around - at least for the first few seasons. But with 6 goals and 6 assists in his first 10 games, he's gaining interest from Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, both Manchester clubs, Bayern, PSG, Juventus and Barcelona - I'm expecting his £5,750,000 minimum release clause to be met, I just hope it's not in January. And with those stats from Bundgaard, you can tell that we've started well, an incredible 8 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss from our first 10 games, scoring 26 goals and conceding 6. Our 4-3-3 Gegenpress style tactic is working well, with my style preferring high determined, high work rate players in our side. But I will discuss the tactic and choices further as the thread goes on. Only 8 more games before we meet the winter break so I will follow up this post with a few more where I hope to explain some more of my thinking as I take over the reigns of Randers. Hej hej!

Following with keen interest, always love your threads - all the best!