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.

Arthur? (Gremio) Seems to be popular in here.

Pretty tough Champions League group though; Dortmund, Zenit and Inter Milan.

So first season done, League and Europa League won Transfer Window done - wholesale changes! Signing youth, like I always do, but trying to sign young English (or British) talent for outgoing replacements. Problem is, they're usually very expensive, so I have actually promoted a couple of our own youth. Squad going into second season is; Donnarumma, Rajkovic, Cech, Bellerin, Alexander-Arnold, Tierney, Aarón, Koscielny, de Ligt, de Vrij, Chambers, Holding, Stark, T. Davies, Ozil, Maitland-Niles, Wilshere, Cazorla, Lacazette, Aubameyang, Asensio, Nelson, Nketiah, Iwobi. Cazorla and Cech being kept around for now for tutoring. So only 2 English lads bought (and 1 Scottish), but also 3 promoted from within, along with the purchases of De Ligt, Aarón and Donnarumma AND clearling a ton off the wage bill. Overall successful window. Squad age of 24 (or 23.79) - probably being raised by Cech and Cazorla. So really, my squad for the foreseeable is pretty much sorted I'll mainly sign Newgens and replace any potential outgoings (so Aubameyang at the end of the season possibly) with more developed (but still young) players. If they're English, even better, Rashford would be amazing.

Asensio was transfer listed by RM for £29m. Don't think I even need him but bought him anyway, far too good a player with room for growth to not take at that price.

I finally started my first FM save of the year - as always, first save with Arsenal. Sold Xhaka and Ospina. Bought De Vrij and some young GK CB and RB all on the cheap. Holding gone out on loan to West Brom. Lost to Chelsea in Community Shield on Penalties - won first 3 league games against Huddersfield (a), Watford (h), Man City (a).

Thanks @yugular Speaking of job hunting, it didn't take me long to land a new one.. I am the new manager of Guangzhou Evergrande! I'm delighted with this, being one of the bigger teams in China I'm hoping that I can get Asia done pretty quickly. Their manager was sacked after finishing 4th in the Chinese Superleague. They have a very strong squad with players like Zeca, Jackson Martinez and Paulinho, including a tidy £35m transfer budget. I have the African Championship of Nations coming soon too, I know it doesn't count towards the challenge, but I would like to put in a strong showing to avoid the sack!

2019/2020 Season Review Well, the season isn't actually over, but my time here is. We finished our trophy collection in Africa winning the 2 remaining trophies missing from Mthatha Bucks' cabinet. We won the MTN 8 Cup (yay?), but most importantly, we got the victory in the Champions League I was desperately looking for. Due to losing some players on free transfers, I had to drastically change my style which worked so successfully in the domestic league, especially against unknown opposition. Luckily, we played more familiar opposition in Ajax CT in the final, who we had already played 3 times before this, twice in the MTN 8 and once in the league, so I knew what to expect. We came through relatively easily and I'm delighted to say that Africa is checked off the list MTN 8 Cup I won't go into huge detail, but we won the one remaining domestic cup trophy we hadn't yet, although I wasn't that bothered by it, a trophy is a trophy. The game in the final against the usual enemy Kaizer Chiefs was a cracker however. Fixtures/Results African Champions League The big one. It started off really well, smashing everything in our way, including a HUGE 8-1 victory away to Al-Alhy, until as mentioned above, we had a revamp of the squad, which meant I had a lot of players no longer with the club, or unavailable due to not being registered, so I had to use some of our lesser players, and took a more counter-attacking approach. As you can see from the fixtures, it worked, and we won based on having a mean defence, not something I'd normally associate this side with and in the process ended up setting a record for the most clean sheets in the competition's history. I was glad to play Ajax CT in the final however, as we'd already beaten them 3 times this season prior to it Fixtures/Results Fixtures/Results continued Conclusion What next? Well, I'll probably resign now. The Chinese season is pretty much finished, so I may make that my next destination, in pretty good timing too. The Guangzhou Evergrande manger's position is "Very Insecure" and the Jiangsu manger's position is "Under Review", whether I'm classed as good enough for either of those sides is a different matter. It's been a blast with Mthatha Bucks, building them as a force in South Africa, as well as leaving them a tidy £5m in the bank, with a new stadium on the way, and a whole bunch of fantastic youth prospects, hopefully they can continue on without me. Will do a quick post again once I have a new job Season Team Position Notes and Achievements 16/17 Mthatha Bucks 3rd Promoted to ABSA Premiership. Was only in charge for 4 league games and the playoffs. 17/18 Mthatha Bucks 1st Winners of ABSA Premiership. Semi-final of Nedbank Cup. African CL qualification. 18/19 Mthatha Bucks 1st Winners of ABSA Premiership, winners of Nedbank Cup, winners of Telkom Knockout cup, group stage of African CL. New manager of Algeria. 19/20 Mthatha Bucks n/a Winners of MTN 8 Cup, winners of African Champions League, resigned shortly after. Challenge Progress Club 1/10 top domestic leagues - (Mthatha Bucks, SA 2018) 1/10 domestic cups - (Mthatha Bucks, Nedbank Cup, 2019) 1/5 club continental championships (African CL, Mthatha Bucks, 2019) 0/1 club world championship International 0/5 continental tournaments 0/2 world tournaments

@darren1983 Great to have you back mate Shame you lost your old save but I look forward to more updates from you. Interestingly I was rejected by Thanda Royal Zulu when I was unemployed at the start, in hindsight, I'm not too bothered

I've edited my post above with my most recent season update

2018/2019 Season Review League Dominance. We absolutely walked the league, a vast improvement on last year, mainly down to our away form improving hugely. We lost just the once all season, but the the thing I found most impressive was we won every home game, we really turned it into a fortress and made some of the "better" teams in the league look amateur. I didn't improve the squad an awful lot, mainly bought in a GK for the first team and the rest were squad options, but all the youngsters from the previous season were all a year older, had developed well, and really took to the challenge and propelled us to a higher level than the previous season. My top scorer with a superb 30 goals in all comp was a 17 year old who we got from our youth intake the previous season. League Table Fixtures/Results Nedbank Cup We also went that one stage further this year, managing to win the domestic cup of South Africa, getting our revenge against Kaizer Chiefs from the previous seasons final. It was a relatively simple run, with only our local rivals Chippa Utd giving us a problem on the way, a game which went to a nervy penalty shootout. The team held their nerve though and went on to win the competition, another trophy for the cabinet. Fixtures/Results Telkom Knockout Cup At the time I couldn't remember if this counted towards the challenge, so I wasn't entirely bothered about if we won this. In hindsight it did count, but then didn't matter as we won the Nedbank Cup anyway. Regardless, we won it. I used this competition to give gametime to my "Second Team" and again it was relatively simple, however I suppose we were rather lucky in all our games, except the final, being at home, where we were invincible. Fixtures/Results MTN 8 Cup This really was a trophy I didn't care about, I used my second team in every game to give them gametime and if we won it, great, if we didn't, oh well. It was the only trophy we didn't win this season however, losing in the final to Wits, who seemed to get the better of us more than any other team in the league. It wasn't the best run, we only won one game, but it was early in the season and I don't think the team were quite in full flow by then. Alas, it's not going to be giving me sleepless nights not winning this. Fixtures/Results Conclusion Well it seems we're now the team to beat in South Africa, making a clean sweep of all the major trophies in South Africa and winning a "tremendous treble". How can we improve? Well, we probably can't. I have some players leaving on frees as they want too much for a new contract, who's replacements I have already sorted out, however this could effect me in the Continental Competition, which has started very well for us, we're currently in the group stage. I was finally granted permission to do some coaching badges, finishing my National C Licence, and currently learning my National B Licence. The board also announced plans to build a new stadium, which due to our recent success, could be afforded straight from our own cash reserves without the need for a loan, which I thought was fanatastic, it increases our capacity by an extra 8000 or so fans. How close we will be to selling out though I don't know. Also, I got my first international job! I am now the manager of Algeria as you can probably see in the screenshots above, they did awfully in the ACON, I applied, and they offered me a job immediately. The squad is a lot weaker than I expected though, so I will have a hard time having success with them I feel, but then, stranger things have happened. I will obviously have to stay here until African Champions League is over at least, but I am just about ready to leave, so hopefully we can win it and I can move on to Asia. Keep up the good work everyone Season Team Position Notes and Achievements 16/17 Mthatha Bucks 3rd Promoted to ABSA Premiership. Was only in charge for 4 league games and the playoffs. 17/18 Mthatha Bucks 1st Winners of ABSA Premiership. Semi-final of Nedbank Cup. African CL qualification. 18/19 Mthatha Bucks 1st Winners of ABSA Premiership, winners of Nedbank Cup, winners of Telkom Knockout cup, group stage of African CL. New manager of Algeria. Challenge Progress Club 1/10 top domestic leagues - (Mthatha Bucks, SA 2018) 1/10 domestic cups - (Mthatha Bucks, Nedbank Cup, 2019) 0/5 club continental championships 0/1 club world championship International 0/5 continental tournaments 0/2 world tournaments

I've been away this week on holiday but I'm back home now and will post another update once this season has finished. It seems to have started very well Well done to everyone on their progress!