Collzy

Table | Squad | Transfers | Finances Hey, so it’s been a while, sorry about that! I haven’t been around on the forums much or really playing FM recently but got that itch again and I couldn’t leave this save abandoned until I had failed. My initial post is here for anyone wishing to see how I started off. I’m also not used to doing “update posts” like these so forgive me if it’s a mess, my memory on the early parts of the season are a little hazy too As I mentioned previously, the board only wanted newly promoted Worthing to just survive, the media thought we had very little chance of doing so and we had a terribly unbalanced squad, with only 16 players across all levels at the club, three of them being goalkeepers. My main target to begin with was to not fall to pieces until I could get the youth intake to boost the squad. Taking all of this into account, I must’ve been blessed by the footballing gods when I was appointed manager, as that is the only explanation I have for what happened this season. PROMOTED VIA THE PLAYOFFS Although we lost our 2 best players before a ball had even been kicked, some of the players that did remain were of what I thought was decent quality and something to work with, it wasn’t all completely disastrous! We were incredibly lucky with injuries, in that we hardly got any. When we did, no one else seemed to pick up a long term one, or did anything stupid and get themselves sent off. The season started off well, we won our first 6 league games. However we then went on an a pretty bad run winning 1 of our next 12, with 5 losses and 6 draws. Due to the good start to the season however, it gave me hope of turning it around, we weren’t too far outside of the playoffs at this point and the wins at the beginning of the season gave me hope of pushing on. Our inconcistent form continued into the new year, never able to win more than one game consecutively, but also never losing or drawing more than one game consecutively, with other teams around us seemingly dropping points at a similar rate, the playoffs were still within a reach. March is where things seemed to really click with the squad, which coincided with a good youth intake as I was able to boost my squad a bit, with two guys able to go straight into my main 11 in positions that needed strengthening. With 13 games remaining, we won 11 and lost only two, a run that saw us push up the table and seal a playoff place. I was suprisingly confident going into the playoffs with that run of form behind us. The playoffs first saw us play Gloucester, who we beat comfortably 3-0, before playing Billericay. The game was 2-2 with 15 minutes remaining until academy graduate Sizwe Komane scored in the 76th minute to put us into the final against Wealdstone. I would be lying if I said I didn’t have concerns for this game. Wealdstone finished 2nd behind Havant and Waterlooville, however finished with a whopping 101 points, 14 points clear of 3rd place Billericay and 20 points clear of myself. I actually felt a little bad for a whole of 5 seconds when we won following a 69th minute penalty. We seemed to come under a barrage of shots after this, outnumbering us 23 shots to 6, but alas we were victorious and have earnt promotion to the Vanarama National League. I think this may have been a little too soon, I’m not optimistic of staying up, however some of my youngsters have developed a little already, so hopefully they have enough about them to keep us in the division next year. For now, I'll celebrate. As for the cups, we didn’t have a great showing, but it really helped us in terms of attendances and our finances. We went out in both the 1st round of the FA Cup and the FA Vase. Hoping to improve on this next season. My next post likely won’t be so detailed, this was partly to help me get back into it Youth Intake To be honest any year would've been a decent year for me I think, but I was especially happy with the intake this season as it allowed me to buff the squad out. I will have more control over youth recruitment going forward. Worthing started out with good facilities for this level anyway which has only been helped by the board improving the youth recruitment and academy coaching this season. My three favourites being; Sizwe Komane 21A Sam Douglas 21B Ted Wilde 21C We'll likely be completely out of our depth next season, but if we can survive then it's something to build on. Next update at the end of next season, unless we get sacked before that PROGRESS

I've been itching to try this properly recently, lurking in the thread for a while weighing the decision up. I started one with Palermo earlier in the year but real life events and lack of motivation killed that off pretty quickly. So after many many hours reloading, I finally got one of the two teams I wanted to give this challenge a try with and finally, I am the new manager of Worthing FC. Simple reason being, they're the team geographically closest to me eligible for the challenge. Well, 2nd behind Lewes, but they didn't appear once on my reloads. I could tell this was going to be a challenge when I checked the squad and including the youth from last year, they had 16 players, 3 of which were goalkeepers, after the clubs 4 best players all decided to leave on frees, due to Worthing not being at the required level. Any accumulation of suspensions or injuries at the same time could and likely would ruin things very quickly. Profile | Facilities | Club Vision The board want us to just survive. The media have us as finishing rock bottom. I'm currently in February in Season 1, so hopefully a season 1 update shortly, although with FF7R out today, there might be a little delay

So after contemplating this challenge for the past few years, I finally decided to give it a proper crack for the first time. Burgess Hill Town FC used to be geographically the closest eligable team to me for these types of challenges, just 3 miles, so I'd always wanted to do this with them, however they are not in this year's edition due to being relegated last year. Instead, I've opted for the extra bonus of trying to restore a team to its 'former glory', so here I am, based in the Sicily, as the new manager of Palermo! Here's my profile. I really hope I can give this a good go, even if the speed of my updates becomes inconsistent.

So after a long time teasing with various different careers, I finally decided to give this a proper shot after gaining more experience in recent editions in various lower leagues, which had been my previous undoing as I was completely stuck. I went in with the intention of getting either Burgess Hill, Lewes or Whitehawk, as all three are local to me and I have a connection with in some way. However looking at the reputation list, I knew it'd be quite unlikely to get Burgess Hill and to a lesser extent Lewes, so I somewhat settled on Whitehawk, my place of birth and where I lived for the first couple of years of my life. And so here we go, the new manager of Whitehawk. With a media prediction of 15th, I expected us to be safe, although the bookies gave us almost zero chance of going up, so I was determined to prove them wrong and go up first time of asking. Hopefully this could be accomplished with some astute signings. Here's my profile. As I wasn't expecting our finances to remain positive for too long, I also went ahead and requested a coaching badge immediately before they could decline due to our finances, luckily they accepted and this was a good start to my career already. I have actually already completed the first season, as I wanted to complete a season before posting in here and comitting to anything, so I will write up how the first season went a bit later on.

Great work @Sons FC thanks It's been good fun!

Third Place England 0-2 Belgium Final France 2-0 Croatia

I thought Croatia were meant to tire, England are the ones who look absolutely knackered.

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/world-cup-2018/fairnesstabelle/pokalwettbewerb/WM18/saison_id/2017/plus/1 Croatia top of the cards table now, getting 4 cards in the game against Russia.

I'm alive! I'd prefer to bottle it in my own fashion instead of by forgetting to post Semi-Finals France 2-1 Belgium Croatia 1-2 England

Good goal, great ball from Coutinho.

Belgium have a great squad but if Roberto Martinez ends up a World Cup winning manager then wow Obviously all Thierry's work

Oooft, shocker from me. Uruguay v France 2-1 Brazil v Belgium 2-1 Russia v Croatia 1-2 (aet) Sweden v England 0-1

Djourou!

@Readingfanman Thanks mate Might do the lottery next!

I've edited my post with my predictions for this round.