sat0urn

To add to Ben's point - it is actually refreshing to see a career thread where the player doesn't always win, keep up the good work my friend! But I do have one other question - in all of your threads I've read so far, the amount of injuries to your players is just enormous. Do you have some insane training schedules, or is it just your luck?

Before the Thread, there was Angered… Angered BK, to be precise Starting off with no coaching badges and the lowest playing experience turned out to be harder than expected. I’ve chosen the England pre-season start date and, with all leagues loaded, there weren’t that many clubs eager to take me in as their manager. But one lucky winner was Angered BK, a team from one of the divisions in the Swedish 4th tier. The semi-professional outfit wasn’t having the best of times when I took over, hovering just above relegation with less than half of the season remaining, and looking into the squad I found that there was a general lack of players, but most importantly, a lack of center-backs and a lack of goals, so amending those became the first thing I’ve done at the club. Thankfully, one of those was easy to solve, as the capable player was already at the club, with little to no gametime so far. Meet Haris Heremic. (attributes and stats true as of January 27, 2024 – after my tenure at Angered BK) Heremic stood out as one of the better players in the team – yet the man had barely played up until I took over managerial duties, to my genuine surprise. Yes, he had basically no pace already at that point, but the man could finish, as I soon found out myself. In 34 games under my wing Haris scored an astounding 33 goals – most likely the best return I’ve seen from a player in all my years playing FM. Angered were admittedly not as bad as I expected them to be – they actually won more games before me (4) than under me (3), and we were fortunate enough to survive relegation play-offs in the end, finishing just 3 points ahead of Vanersborgs FK and suffering an awful end to the year where we only won 1 in the last 5. Heremic, as you can see, was ever-present on the scoresheet, but otherwise the team was quite dreadful – the backline consisted of players who were already at the club, plus the young newgen center-backs I added along the way. Perhaps the worst part of this set-up was the goalkeeper Simon Zupancic, who I’ve appropriately nicknamed because he’s a bellend – genuinely one of the worst goalkeepers I’ve seen so far. In preparation for my first full season as manager of Angered BK I’ve added some quality all across the squad, and the team did well overall – after some slight flirtation with the promotion play-off we eventually claimed 4th, which in my eyes is an amazing result considering the overall level of players on display. There were some really frustrating games, most of all in July which we could’ve finished without a single win if it wasn’t for Heremic and Kenneth Barezi, perhaps the best signing of the 2023 season. Heremic ended up scoring 23 goals in 22 league games and absolutely solidified himself as one of the legends of the save this early on. Some other heroes included the aforementioned Barezi, who finished with 9 goal contributions in 24 games; David Bjornsson, also with 9 goal contributions; Matheus Vilmar and Johan Kallander, two of the newgen center-backs I picked up a season earlier, with Kallander ending up the best in our back 4; Fayera Janneh, a remnant of the previous regime who became the unlikely assist king from the center of midfield, finishing with 5 assists in 20; and Johan Bengtsson, who was loaned in from a fellow 4th tier side Hittarps IK as a backup goalkeeper but became Zupancic’s replacement towards the end of the season after the latter kept his atrocious form week in, week out. Angered will forever be remembered as the club who gave me my start – but it was always my intention to leave them after the end of my contract. I’ve always viewed Scandinavian lower leagues as a sort of FM ‘purgatory’ – the way I see it, there’s almost no point in trying to build something from the ground up here as the average level of players is just too low, there’s basically no money around and the reputation of even the premierships of Sweden, Norway and so on is quite low too. So the sooner I managed to escape this level, the better. Luckily, a perfect candidate for my next job emerged on the horizon… Going Up – But Ever so Slightly At the end of November my contract with Angered BK officially came to an end, and I started searching for my next job. There weren’t many around, and even fewer gave me a chance at an interview. One of those teams was GIF Sundsvall, who started the save as high as Allsvenskan – the Swedish Premiership. Two seasons later, and they’ve suffered two back-to-back relegations to Ettan Norra which is where I took over. As the 3rd tier of Swedish football generally consists of semi-professional outfits, we were instantly viewed as favorites to go back up to Superettan automatically, even before I did any transfer business, and while the majority of players were quite good for this level, I couldn’t pass up opportunities to get even better players in. I did leave most of the core crew intact, but the additions elevated us to a whole new level. Just look at some of the names – we actually managed to sign English Premier League rejects! So of course, the actual season was a struggle. And I mean ONE HELL of a STRUGGLE. Yes, we eventually finished the year unbeaten in both the league and the qualifying rounds of the Swedish Cup, but we gave ourselves a hard time – so many of these draws could’ve been easily avoided if my strikers could properly finish, or if my center-backs defended just slightly better. But in the end we managed to steer clear of the embarrassment and secured the Ettan Norra title on the final day after drawing against fellow promotion rivals AFC Eskilstuna, who overtook us at the top several gameweeks prior. Truth be told, I could’ve done better too, as the tactic I started with was the one I used at Angered, but after the two draws at the start I adjusted it slightly to make it a bit more attacking and a bit less relying on a big man up front. This might have been my most successful transfer window yet – only two of the players we brought in failed to consistently perform well. Of course, the trio who moved from the EPL – Longstaff, Vokins and the loanee Dixon – were perhaps the best players in the squad. That’s not to say our other additions, and even the players who were at the club already, didn’t do well – Charlie Weberg became a fine addition to an already decent selection of center-backs, while Alioum and Bengtsson provided a ton of assists for the lone striker up front, be it Dixon or Alexander Larsson, a youngster already at the club who, while not as clinical as Dixon, still managed to score 7 in 19. Other honorable mentions include Oscar Jonsson, our first-choice goalie who comfortably won the Golden Glove with 16 clean sheets in 30 league games; Dusan Jajic, a decent center-mid who notched up 6 goal contributions in 25 league games; and the rest of my center-backs, namely Stevan Beko, Teodor Stenshagen and Fredrik Lundgren, all of whom were reliable when called upon with their superb defensive performances. And this brings us to the present day. The year is 2025, and GIF Sundsvall are back to the Superettan after a slight tumble. The transfer window is shut, and the first games of the season have already been played. How well have we done so far? Well, I’ll let you know in the next post.

Hey. So the Eastern Bloc save I started a few months ago didn’t work out – I was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of leagues loaded, and that coupled with my overall FM rustiness to put me off indefinitely. I’m still quite interested in the idea of Eastern Europe dominating football, but that will have to wait. To shake off the rustiness and get back into FM properly I’ve decided to start a plain old ‘rags to riches’ Journeyman save across all European leagues that come with the base game. No challenge this time around – just start from the lowest possible point and build up my reputation in the beautiful game. I’ve already played through a couple of seasons before starting the thread, so the first post will be dedicated to those ‘formative’ years of the save.

My journey across Eastern Europe starts in Latvia, where a humble club in the 2nd division by the name of Salaspils decided to take their chances with a young inexperienced manager from Russia The club has just 5 points from their first 8 games and are currently sitting in the relegation play-off places, 4 points away from safety. The first league game is against, let's see here... ah, the team at the top. Classic And in all fairness we did well against one of the big boys. At least in the first half. I feel like this result doesn't really reflect the quality of this team, after all Leevon are in 1st and we haven't won a game of football yet (in the league, that is, somehow this bunch of semi-amateur players did get to the Round of 16 in the cup). Next update will be at the end of the season, the aim for which, by the way, is to avoid relegation.

I've attached the files since the website I downloaded it from originally is Russian and requires registration to be able to download stuff. There are two versions - one with the old Russian cup format and one with the current one - plus the .lnc file that changes Russian league names which you can use with any other name fix I believe. Competitions and other Fixes.lnc Russia ex-USSR 23.4 d5 (old cup).fmf Russia ex-USSR 23.4 d5.fmf

The problem with setting up a save like this is... well: Yeah finding my first job will take some time probably. I'll update once I'm all set up and ready for the first game of the season, wherever that may be.

“The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc, the Socialist Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed during the Cold War…” – excerpt from Wikipedia. In the world of football I think it is safe to say that, despite the successes of Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia on international tournaments, the genius of Valeriy Lobanovskiy and the triumphs of Steaua Bucharest and Red Star Belgrade in the Champions League, Eastern Europe is far behind the West in terms of quality, ability and the number of continental and international honors. The goal of this save then is easy to formulate – win the Champions League with any team from a former Eastern Bloc state. Those include all former Soviet states that currently compete in UEFA competitions (yes, including Russia, which in this alternate universe can compete both on the club and country levels); all nations that comprised Yugoslavia (I do know that Yugoslavia broke off relations with USSR soon after WW2, but since it was aligned with the communist movement, I am including it here); both nations that comprised Czechoslovakia; Poland; Hungary; Albania; Bulgaria; and Romania. You may have noticed one major nation absent from this list. For the sake of challenge, I can not take charge of East German football clubs. Despite being a big part of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, East Germany – or, I guess, Germany in general – isn’t just one of the Top-5 European leagues as of today, but is also a very rich league, which would make this challenge a whole lot easier when I earn enough reputation. Germany will remain as playable, along with other Top-5 nations, but only so that their clubs can generate players and therefore remain strong contenders in continental competitions. One other thing to mention is that while the Champions League cup is the ultimate goal of this save, it doesn’t mean I should ignore the two other UEFA competitions. On that note, a separate mod that turns the new competition format off is also included. And no, I’m not going to venture into Asia, Africa and Latin America. While a worldwide communist revolution in football could make for an even more challenging and engaging FM adventure, I feel like just conquering Europe on its own will be difficult enough to last this save many decades into the future. Perhaps an idea for the future… but for now, it’s time to turn Europe red.