wils2603

Yesssss! Our first derby win. And what a time to do it. 1-0 away from home and down to 10 men for 45 mins. 2 wins and a draw from 3 games of this championship playoff. Great start!

We have rattled through the second half of the season playing some great stuff and we have maanged to finish in the championship playoffs once again. We won 6 out of 9 games which is a great effort to finish in 4th. It was pretty compettive this year for 4th-6th so we needed to play our best stuff. When we lost 2 in a row i thought uh oh, here comes the wobble but we rallied and finished strong. Unfortunately we had a pretty poor showing in the Europa League and gort knocked out by Braga. Hopefully we can get Europa again or even better this year. Championship Group So this is what the champiohship group looks like after they halve the points. 4 points off top. Can we do it? Our record against the top teams has been slightly better this season but not by much. Id love it we could finish in 3rd again. Better than that might be tough, but not impossible. Our squad is in good health. 10 games to go. First up is Anderlecht who are in a rich veign of form. We held them to a draw last time out, lets go one better....

Hes started well! Hopefully he girlfriend has joined him Charleroi....

January 2025 Transfers Transfers Out We managed to get rid of two back up squad players in Ozornwafor and Jackson Tchatchoua who had made a handful of appearences between them off the bench and some decent money for them. I hadnt planned on selling Pojezny who has been a great player for us for 18 months as our LCB. We signed him for €925k and sold him for €7.5m which is good business although if it wasnt for him moaning about a contract we could have possibly hung on to him to the summer and maybe got more for him but a great profit either way which gave us some much needed funds to spend where we need to. We also have Gnaka who has been playing well in the LCB position also and we have Knezovic who is able there so all in all I dont think it will hurt us too much. Chris De Valck heads on loan to our affiliate for the rest of the season. Transfers In We finally were able to sign some adequate goalkeeping reinforcements and our new No1 is quite the find. We broke our transfer record to get him and I think he be great for us, very good atributes for a sweeper keeper at this level. We also brought in two players on loan, Desplanches is a young keeper who is quite promising but is there for depth and Malcolm Jeng i tried to sign on loan as a young u[ and coming left sided CB but Atalanta swooped in but they were happy to loan him to me. Hopefully I wont be ******** it every time the other team has a highlight now we have a proper keeper in goal.

This is how the league is looking as we head to the January Transfer window. We will be looking to do some business in January, namely Goalkeeping reinforcements. We also have had some players who have said they will be "exploring their options" when their contract comes up at the end of next season, so I might need to cash in on them now or at end of the season to make sure I can maximise the profit. Its dissapointing but I guess thats the game at this level. My scouts have been working hard so we have a great shortlist of replacements. But we do need to sell to buy first.

Our unbeaten run finally game to an end in the last game before the winter break. 12 games unbeaten which has been a monumental turnaround since the start of the season. Nut we lost 3-2 to Gent who have been in great form themselves. All good things come to end and we are in good shape. 5th in the league on 36 points.

We have been in cracking form since our tactical tweak. Unbeaten in all competitions since our loss to Bodo/Glimt in the first week of October. We headed to our rivals Olympic Charleroi on the 22nd December for the 6th round of the Croky cup. Our injuries were racking up (something which seems a little too frequently in this beta - Has anyone experienced similar?) so I rotated heavily for this game but we went to the Stade Yvan Georges just across the road from us full of confidence. Olmpic Chareleroi on the other hand were languishing in the relgation spots in the Challenger Pro League. And of course we lost on penalties! We were so wasteful in front of goal. Another season where we crash out in the early rounds of the cup and my derby record taking another hit. Alas, we move on.

Great performance in our final Europa League game and we managed to take the victory that allowed us to finish in 8th place in the league. Only lost once in 6 games. Im not actually too familair with how the next stage works, I guess we will find out

Superb derby result away at Standard, 2-0 down and we came back to draw. Mbenza coming up clutch! We've got some great momentum now.

Right, this next post was meant to be a review of our transfer business and looking ahead to our first few games of the season. However with limited time at the moment (2 kids + work) I thought I would play some games first and then come back and update on the tranfers. But the start of the season has been very challenging to say the least, allbeit my own fault for letting my no1 keeper and backup depart and then not bringing in a proper replacement as I splashed the whole budget on some other positions but more on that later. Our start of the season looked like this..... And i thought to myself Id be dissapointed not to pick up 6 or 7 wins and then maybe a result off Genk, Club Brugge or Anderlecht. How wrong I was. A mixture of changing a tactic that wasnt neccesarrily broken (just needed a few tweaks) and playing a young goalkeeper who is nowhere near the first team led us to 6 losses in our first 8 games with the lowlight being a 6-1 humillation defeat at home by Kortrijk. Who?! I hear you ask. Well exactly! 6 shot on target and 6 goals. Things were not good at all. We bounced back with a win against Gent in the next game and we chopped and changed a few things reverting back to our season 1 Howeball. We then lost two games in a row in the league only scoring once and conceeding 6 goals against Club Brugge and Anderlecht. We then won our first game in the Europa League against Rapid Bucuresti 2-0 which was then followed up by a 2-1 defeat again at home against newly promoted side Deinze. Things were inconsistent shall we say. This prompted another tactical tweak, our roaming playmaker in the cm strata was just not working for us, but i didnt want to move them back to the dm strata which we had for season 1 as despite results I liked having a ball winner in the dm for more defensive solidarity......Sounds like its working I hear you cry?! That 6-1 defeat proves it.... Instead, we kept the Ball winner in DM and chanaged the full backs from inverted to a wingback on attack on the left which worked so well for us last season and the full back on support on the right. Ahead of the DM we have gone for a double mezzala. Ive decided attack is the best form of defence. Invoking not just the intensity structure and energy of Eddie Howes Newcastle but now also Keegans if you score 3 we'll score 4. At least I hope. With the ball winner holding his postion and providing cover in the central areas of the pitch the mezzalas are able to reak havok in and around the edge of the box hopefully arriving on to balls by our wide players and linking up with our striker. The other positions are as they were. See below for how we are shaping up now. Team imstructions fairly simple, win the ball high up the pitch. 5 offensive players plus an attacking wingback to counter and create some chances with plenty of players in and around the ball for when we do. After 2 wins in 8 games, we employed this double mezzala tactic and have gone on a run to win 4 league games in a row including handing out a 6-1 druming ourselves against Mechelen which really helped heal the scars of our own humillation. In the Europa league we lost to Bodo/Glimt which was dissapointing but we managed to pull off a big result in the next game against Feyenoord winning 2-0 at home. A superb result and some much needed prize money to replenish the depleated coffers. Perhaps a slightly fortunate result when you look at the stats, but that meant 5 wins in 6 games and quite the turnaround to a very very poor start. So at the end of October we are 8th with 18 points after 12 games and only a point off the championship playoff places in 6th. We have our rivals Standard Liege in our next game and this will reall be a test to see if this new tactic can really make us go on a run. We are yet to beat them in this save... Also a quick word on our other rival (which rather annoyingly they are not listed in game as rivals but as mentioned previously their stadium is 850m from our own), we have drawn Olympic Charleroi in the Croky Cup. They actually got promoted last season to the second division so only one league away from us now. Transfers I guess we should look at our transfer business quickly. I thought we recruited very well and pulled off a few transfer coups until I realised I had nothing left to sign a first team worthy goalkeeper which has been nothing short of a disaster, although the ship has steadied a little. But. GK is a top priority for us as long as we have the funds to do so which does not seem likely at the moment. Dennis Praet joined on a pre contract and since changing to a mezzala has been performing well. Silas Gnaka was signed on a free and can play pretty much anywhere along the back line and in DM and has actually been starting for us at LCB in our recent good run of form. Solid attributes for this level and versatile. We managed to raid Crvena Zvezda for two top talents in Jovan Sljivic and Vladimir Lucic who were both found by my scouts while scouting Eastern Europe. Jovan Sljivic fits perfectly in our team as a mezzala and Lucic the more developed of the two add competition with Guiagon in the inverted winger position on the left. Both players although have started slowly to life in Charleroi Im in doubt will be a huge success for us and ultimately we should be able to make a sizeable profit from them. Im sure you have noticed there is a rather big name player on that list of transfers.... We have managed to bring back Thomas Menuier to Beglium and along with Dennis Praet I couldnt be happier. A one year deal on relatively cheap wages was too hard to ignore. Our poor run of form hasnt helped his settling back into Belgian life and he actually lost his place to our right back from last season Tomas Silva but Im hoping with a lot of season left he will be invaluable to us as the season goes on. As mentioned we are a little light in the goalkeeping department. An understatement. Not exactly what you would call first team quality even for this standard. Chiacig has actually performed pretty well and has been in goal for our recent good run of form while Osayi was out injured. But this is all we have till at least January, and then hopefully we can do some business but likely on loan if the finances allow. One final thing you might have noticed a name in the starting XI and on the scoresheets above that hasnt been mentioned yet. Anthony Descotte, we were lucky to be able to bring him back from a loan as he was on loan at FC Utrecht last season and ended up being joint top goalscorer in the Eredivisie, hes come back and been our starting striker scoring 5 goals and assiting 4 and this new tactic seems to be getting more out of him now. Hes one of thos players that is a lot of fun to watch in the match engine. Still young and homegrown he is a great addition to our squad. So that concludes this update, apolgiies if a little all over the place. Work and 2 kids and general life stuff getting in the way makes it challenging to play the game and update but Im enjoying documenting this save and really enjoying playing as Charleroi. Thanks for reading. Wils

Cheers mate!

Thats great going, finding things a little tougher over here. HAHA

Season 1 Review and Looking Ahead to Season 2 Well that's that then, season 1 finished and it's been an excellent season. Whilst the wait for a trophy goes on, we have taken great steps to achieving our goals and have been playing some great football along the way. The first half of the season was arguably better and we seemed to run out of steam in the end but we clung on for a 3rd place finish with a win on the last day of the season and secured our place in the Europa league playoffs for a chance of making the Europa League proper. All in all a great result and bettering the 6th place finish IRL Charleroi made last season. Our rivals Standard walked away as champions, and our record against them was terrible all season. Lost every game against them, a record I will be determined to better next season. OH Leuven who placed 13th in the regular season lost the relegation play off to be relegated which must be a tough pill to swallow after finishing 8 points ahead of the bottom two. But that is the weird and wonderful Juplier league for you. Everything all to play for at both ends of the table right up until the end. Players of the Season It was a strong collective effort overall from the team. Although we struggled to keep clean sheets with just 6 clean sheets all season, offensively we had no issue. Three of our players hitting double figures for goals and five players with seven assists or more which really showed how much the team contributed from all areas of the pitch. However, there were three standout players this season which propelled us to a third place finish. Isaac Mbenza scored 13 goals and contributed 4 assists from inside forward on the right. A combination of his pace, dribbling and strength made him a constant threat for us going forward and he often popped up with a decisive goal. At 28 years old he's coming into his prime now and we continue to be a key player for us in the coming seasons. Parfait Guiagon was our creator in chief, the inverted winger racked up twelve assists and 8 goals and was a joy to watch his mazy runs before whipping in dangerous balls or scoring from long range. Two footed and with great vision he's been a star player for us from the inverted winger position on the left. He is developing nicely and at 23 years old still has room to grow. But my player of the season goes to our new signing Salifou Diarrassouba. What a season from him, 13 goals and 8 assists from mezzala. He was involved in everything that was good about our play. Destructive on the counter, dynamic in possession and clinical in front of goal. Ive always loved the mezzala role in FM and in this version the role performs even better and it just looks so good on the new match engine when in full force. Hopefully we see more of the same from him next season. What’s Next? Looking ahead to next season is going to be interesting. We surpassed expectations of a top half finish by finishing 3rd and securing a potential european place. This surpassed my own expectations personally and I feel we are probably a year ahead of schedule which whilst this can be seen as successful it can also lead to new problems and the dreaded second season syndrome. With that in mind in I feel a few changes tactically are required and some personnel changes needed to not only build on this season but also to evolve the style of play that we want to conduct. As mentioned before we found it difficult to keep clean sheets, defensively we were quite vulnerable on the counter, playing a high line and committing a lot of bodies forward. In a way to combat this I have changed a few things tactically, see below for how we will line up in season 2. I have changed the full back positions to Inverted wingbacks. This gives us a 235, or 2323 when in possession and by having 3 players operating in the defensive midfield strata on and around the halfway line when we are building from the back gives us protection centrally if we lose the ball. I'm happy to give up space out wide to enable us to stay compact and narrow if we lose the ball high up the pitch. Also with the added BWM in dm position gives us more protection and also someone who can win the ball back for us and start the counter. The mezzala is unchanged after the success last year but we have moved the RPM from DM to CM to get him to be a little bit more effective in the final third. And also support the inside forward who has a PI of stay wider so that more space is created not only for himself but also for underlaps and interplay with the RPM and IWB. Similarly the IW also has stay wider PI for the same reasons. Although we are playing a high press, I might change the pressing forward to an advanced forward to see if i can get more goals, but we will see how we get on. See image below for how we line up in possession. I like the shape and I love that the Mezzala and RPM can occupy those half spaces. I'm hoping these changes not only give us more structure in possession and ultimately be able to create more goal scoring opportunities but will also protect us from being vulnerable on the counter. I also think this steady evolution will keep opposition teams from finding us too predictable in this second season. Second Season Aims It will be a challenge to better our league position this coming season and I think we are a year or two of really be able to challenge for the the title but there are still a few things that i would like to achieve this coming season: European Football Winning derby record against Standard Lierge Better record against the “Top 4” (Standard, Genk, Anderlecht, Club Brugge) Better defensive record. More clean sheets. A Deep cup run Anything better than the above will be a bonus. It would be great if we can make our mark on the Croky cup after our poor showing last season. In the next post we will look at some personnel changes and the squad we have for season two. Cheers, Wils

This is how the Top 6 Championship playofff looks like. Your season points up to that point get halved and then you play each other twice. Genk the inform team. It will be tough to catch the top 2 but I think if we can finish 3rd or 4th that would be a great season with a chance of getting into Europa league or Conference league. Heres what our fixures look like. Cheers, Wils

Youth Intake is ok. The two fullbacks the pick of the bunch.

So we have just reached the end of February and we had a mini wobble, losing 2 in a row and drawing one. All very winnable games as well. Thankfully we rounded off the month back on track with probably our best performance of the season. Genk had leapfrogged us into second place and they arrived at the Stade du Pays de Charleroi bang in form. We needed a victory not only to keep some breathing space from us in 3rd to the teams in 4th and 5th but also to give us confidence going into the top 6 playoff knowing we can beat these teams. And we did it convincingly, superb team performance. This is how the league looks now with 3 games left until the Top 6 Playoff.

RCSC has a great win at the weekend IRL against Antwerp! 2 penalties from our BBM Marco Ilaimaharitra who I confirm is also good at penalties in the game and has scored every one he's taken.

Superb. Love this approach. Always enjoyed your blogs in the past. I would be interested to know in your experience how successful and I guess transferable promising statistical player metrics translate to in game performances. It’s something I like to look at but not in any massive detail, more of a good sense check for me. I mean we’ve all had players in saves who’s attributes might not be the strongest but they always perform “above their attributes” and I wonder if “in game” this approach is more vindicated with every release as IRL how important these metrics are. Like you say FM is behind the curve, but im interested to hear what you would deem successful in terms of player performance and would you give more weighting to the overall team performance and result rather than say a player who hit the right score in your statistical metrics and came into the team and although the team played and team results were successful but that individual player had a poor or average average rating etc?

Great idea! Will be following. Will you jump ship at the first decent opportunity? Or you looking to have some tournament success first?

We are just over half way through the season now, the January transfer window has just slammed shut and we have made a couple of signings. We signed Yari Verscharen from Anderlecht. Belgian national, young and versatile. Can play pretty much anywhere in offensive midfield positions and in attack. I am bringing him in to add depth to the mezzala position and wide areas. He should be a great addition to our squad depth and home grown! We do have an option fee of €43m so there is next to no chance of us signing him if he performs well. But if he plays well he could be another strong loan option for next season. Our second signing is very much for the future, although he may play a small role from now until the end of the season before we hopefully can find a good loan for him next season. Our scouts found him whilst scouting in Sweden. Good finishing and great physicals and only cost just over €500k for a player with a huge potential upside. We had one departure in Daan Heymans (DM/MC), who only played one game for us so no great loss. Although he coincidently scored the winner against me for his new team - an FM classic right there! We also managed to pull off a bit of a transfer coup. I had my eyes on him at the start of the game when I saw he was transfer listed and his contract was expiring. I couldn't get him on loan at the start of the season as fees and wages were extortionate. But we have managed now to sign him on a pre contract in the summer. We’re bringing back a Belgian player who left the Juplier Pro league for Serie A and then the Premier League. Welcome back (in the summer) Dennis Praet. I have to say I am quite excited about this, he will give us some much needed experience, two footed and will be able to play in the mezzala role or BBM and even out wide if necessary. Anyway before that signing happens I have to make sure we have a good second half of the season. We have now played 23 games and this is where we are. League Results 8 wins out of the 13 games which is great stuff. We lost against arguably the two strongest sides. Antwerp are defending champions and then we lost the derby again which is frustrating. Not a great start to my derby record. Played 2 lost 2. We seem to be quite free scoring which is great, but we are leaking goals. I will look to rectify this, possibly dropping our high line and altering our full backs and even changing one of our CB’s so we do not have two ball playing CB’s. Salifou Diarrassouba has been one of our stand out performers so far this season. 11 goals and 6 assists in 23 games. He is our top scorer, Isaac Mbenza has chipped in with 9 goals from Inside Forward and Youssouph Badji who has won the starting spot at striker has 8 goals. Pascal Guiagon also has 4 goals and 11 assists. Unfortunately we had a dismal showing in the cup. Won in the 6th round but then got knocked out in the 7th round by Genk. The wait continues! Hopefully we can continue our good form for the rest of the season, we have 7 games left until the end of the regular season and then the league splits up where the top 6 then go into a mini league and play each other again where the 6h place team can win the league depending on how their results go. Seems a bit unfair on the team who finish 1st up to this point, could be a serious bottle job. Anyway, anyone has a chance at that point. As long as we do not finish 6th at the end of it….there might a chance of Europe Cheers, Wils

Its a very admirable hobby! Happens to be one of mine also!

Cheers mate! Have you started a save yet?

First 10 Games of the Season We have had an interesting start to the season. We lost the first game at home 1-0 to OH Leuven which was disappointing. We weren't at the races at all, 2 shots all game. We bounced back with a great performance against Cercle Brugge scoring 3 and keeping a clean sheet. We then lost two on the spin against Standard in the derby and then Genk. I felt like we performed well, we just were not clinical in front of goal. We then went on a superb unbeaten run winning the next 5 games in a row which started with a 2-1 victory against Anderlecht. The best performance of the lot being the 3-1 win over a very strong Club Brugge side with our new Mezzala Diarrassouba picking up 2 goals. So after 10 games we are in second place which is somewhat surprising. After losing 3 of the first 4 games I wasnt sure where we would pick up the points over the next few games, but the tactic started to click and we have had some great performances from Guiagon and his compatriot Diarrassouba which have propelled us forward. Remains to be seen if we can maintain this as we have only kept two clean sheets in 10 games. Thanks for reading. Wils

HAHA, that could be quite the career arc!

Yeh i had a really fun save in Belgium at the end of FM22 and didnt really play much of FM23 so I thought Id return. Its a great league, really competitive and a lot of well known players that pop up randomly and of course great youth! Thanks for reading.