Gilberto Silva

Started a Newcastle United save a couple of weeks ago and have recently started the second season. Thought I'd share the details of my save so far. I started off the season very well and was in the hunt for a Europa League finish until we collapsed at the end of the season, losing 6 of our last 7 games! Fared poorly in the cup competitions, losing in the 3rd round of the FA Cup to Wolves and the 2nd round of the EFL Cup to West Ham. So all in all, I was disappointed. Especially considering my top scorer ended up being Vincent Janssen with 7 goals (he signed in January...). I had the initial budgets switched off, which meant the January window was my first opportunity to do some business and I had already planned on sorting our lack of goals issue out, as Rondon, Muto and Joselu were barely contributing at all. It panned out as below: Transfers in: Gonzalo Escalante (Eibar - £4m (£9m)) Divock Origi (Liverpool - £10m (£13m)) Rick van Drongelen (Hamburger SV - £3.5m (£12m)) Alberto Moreno (Liverpool - £5m (£10m)) Vincent Janssen (Tottenham - £6.5m) Transfers out: Ciaran Clark (West Brom - £10m (£11m)) Joselu (Derby Count - loan) I think my transfers were fairly successful, Escalante rotated with Hayden for a spot in my midfield as a CM(D), Origi was originally pencilled in as my new starting CF but Janssen out-performed initially (including a hat-trick against Spurs on his debut). Origi ended the season with 5 goals in 15 games, whereas Janssen had 7 in 15. Not a bad return considering Rondon, Muto and Joselu managed 5 between them all season. At the end of the season, I decided I needed a little more at both ends of the pitch. We were conceding a little too many for my liking (Dubravka and Darlow each made 2 mistakes leading to goals!) and we were still a little lacking in the final third. I did go a little bit crazy with one signing in particular, summer 2019 business: Transfers in: Keylor Navas (Real Madrid - £20.5m (£22.5m)) Jack Grealish (Aston Villa - £9m (£14m)) Luka Miliojevic (Crystal Palace - £14.5m (18.5m)) Nikola Milenkovic (Fiorentina - £49m (£54m)) Ryan Sessegnon (Fulham - £21m) Transfers out: Ki Sung-Yeung (Leciester City - £14m) Federico Fernandez (Bournemouth - £8m) Dwight Gayle (Bournemouth - £12.5m) Rob Elliot (Bristol City - £725,000) Martin Dubravka (PSG - £8m) Henri Saivet (Cardiff - £10m) Joselu (Cardiff - £10m) Florian Lejeune (Brighton - £3m) Mohamed Diamé (Derby County - loan) This leaves my squad looking like this for the season: GK: Keylor Navas / Karl Darlow DR: DeAndre Yedlin / Javi Manquillo DL: Paul Dummett / Alberto Moreno DC: Jamaal Lascelles / Rick van Drongelen DC: Nikola Milenkovic / Fabian Schar MR: Matt Ritchie ML: Christian Atsu / Ryan Sessegnon MC: Luka Miliojevic / Gonzalo Escalante MC: Jonjo Shelvey / Isaac Hayden AM: Jack Grealish / Ayoze Perez FC: Divock Origi / Vincent Janssen / Yoshinori Muto I think I am fairly well equipped for another challenge for the Europa League spots. Already planning on looking for a new right sided midfielder for January as Ritchie isn't getting any younger.

I've mention it before, but I'll mention it again. Player morale etc really, really needs fixing. Every single game I play, I hit October 1st and I get 3 or 4 players asking for transfers because they aren't playing enough. Even if I say "Look mate, we've played 6 games, we have more to play, you will get minutes" they always reject that idea without fail. It's ridiculous.

That must have been really dull in fairness.

Not sure where it should go, but I'm on an Arsenal save, first season and I have a Europa League 2nd KO round game away at Lazio on the Thursday night and then a fixture at 12.30pm on Saturday at home to Manchester United. Shouldn't these league games be scheduled on a Sunday after a Europa League game?

Does anyone find that players kick-off about not getting enough football far too early in this years edition? It seems as though everytime I approach the end of September, I get two or three players complaining about it and I cannot ever seem to satisfy them and it leads to most of the squad getting angry at me and then said player handing in a transfer request. It's insane and really needs fixing, it was bad last year but seems even worse this time around. I mean, I've only played 6 league matches and have two players that have handed in transfer requests because I told them it's a long season, this also led two 5 key players being unhappy with me.

Well, just don't go for those players then.

I always do, I just find it odd than he constantly tries to buy below-average Scottish central midfield players that are no older than 21.

For some reason my DoF seems to always put bids in for 20-21 year old central midfielders who are no good. It happened a lot on the last game too. I don't get it.

I finished my first season as Arsenal boss. As others may have done, I left the transfer budgets off for the first window as I wanted to go for more realism. I ended up with a 4-3-1-2 formation as below: GK: Leno (SK - S) DR: Bellerín (CWB - S) DC: Sokratis (CD - C) DC: Mustafi (BPD - D) DL: Kolasinac / Monreal (CWB - S) MCR: Ramsey / Iwobi (MEZ - A) MC: Torreira (DLP - D) MCL: Xhaka (CM - S) AMC: Ozil (AM - S) STCR: Lacazette (DLF - A) STRL: Aubameyang (AF - A) Season went fairly smoothly, although I did have an issue scoring goals in the beginning. Tinkered with the formation on multiple occasions before decided on the 4-3-1-2 purely because of our lack of real wide players. In January I decided to buy Miguel Almiron from Atlanta United for £10.5m and he ended up slotting into the mezzala role and performed much better than Ramsey and Iwobi. Also signed Radoslaw Majecki from Legia for £2.1m as a promising young goalkeeper as well as Fiete Arp from Hamburg for a fee that could end up costing me £34.5m, I loaned him straight back until the end of the season. I managed a 3rd place finish in the Premier League, although it was tight. Liverpool won the title on 83pts, then Chelsea with 80 and we had 74. Below us were Manchester City, Tottenham and Manchester United on 72, 72 and 70pts respectively. The Europa League I had a fairly easy route through to the First Knockout round, finishing top of my group against Atalanta, FC Kobenhavn and TM Akhisarspor. Highlight being a 6-0 home win against Kobenhavn. Unfortunately, I was drawn in the next round against Dortmund. Gulp. I was beaten 2-0 away from home, before an exciting 3-3 draw at home so that ended up hopes. Reached the FA Cup final where I lost to Spurs 2-1 :-(. I had a simple run to the final, beating Nottingham Forest, Blackburn, Sheffield United, Fulham and Liverpool on the way. League cup I lost in the 3rd round away at Southampton 1-0 but wasn't overly bothered. Now onto this summer, I made a fair few changes. Transfers were: In: Daniel Bentley (Brentford - £4.5m rising to £7m) Josh Tymon (Stoke - £17m) Mikkel Damsgard (FC Nordsjaelland - £1.8m rising to £5.5m) Wouter Burger (Feyenoord - £2.5m rising to £6m) Rúben Neves (Wolves - £40m rising to £59m) Declan Rice (West Ham - £28m rising to £39m) Benjamin Pavard (£36m rising to £52m) Out: Calum Chambers (Brighton - £14m) Petr Cech (Roma - free) Nacho Monreal (Espanyol - £10m) Mohamed Elneny (Lazio - £16m) Henrikh Mkhitaryan (Inter Milan - £25m) Emiliano Martinez (Young Boys - £4.6m) David Ospina (Manchester City - £15m) Sokratis (Real Madrid - £26m) Then I left a sprinkling of other players leave on loan / free transfers. So my team this season is: GK: Leno / Bentley DR: Bellerin / Maitland-Niles DC: Holding / Koscielny DC: Pavard / Mustafi DL: Kolasinac / Tymon MC: Almiron / Iwobi / Ramsey MC: Torreira / Guendouzi MC: Neves / Xhaka AM: Ozil / Smith-Rowe FC: Lacazette / Arp FC: Aubameyang / Welbeck Started the season fairly inconsistently. I beat Bournemouth 4-1 at home on the first day, then drew 0-0 away at Palace (low block football...!), beat Brighton 2-1 at home before drawing 1-1 at Wolves. My Champions League group is a nightmare where we play Celtic, Real Madrid and last years Europa League opponents Dortmund. Sigh.

Is there a way you can get transfers / manager moves sent directly to your inbox? I am always missing major moves etc because I tend not to check the news screen as it becomes a bit cluttered. I miss getting notifications of jobs changes etc. I understand not everyone would want to, but the option to customise would be nice.

I am starting to have a real issue with players complaining all the time. I mean, it was fairly bad in 18 but this one is going a bit too far. I’ve started a few saves now, and every single one, fringe players start forcing moves away within 4 games or so which then upsets the rest of the squad. On my Arsenal save, Cech and Martinez have both publicly complained about not playing despite both being rotation and backup options respectively and Cech has actually started a few games. It feels far too unbalanced for my liking.

I found it. I think I was being dim.

I can't see it listed. Only All Time goals etc.

Not sure if I'm being dumb or not but I cannot find the column for goals/assists or average rating when customising my squad view. For the life of me I cannot see them listed anywhere.

Well, if you are to believe latest speed tests from Arsenal, then Sokratis is the 3rd fastest player in the squad behind Aubameyang and Bellerín.