phnompenhandy

As an AWAY friendly, I GET the £7,500. tbh, I forget about the income - I might get that too, but I'll have to make a friendly for real to check it. When you only get a few dozen people to a game, it's easy to see where the money goes if you make a note of your monthly income and expenditure immediately before and after the game is played.

I know - that's why I didn't believe it at first, until I tried it for myself. SI needs to make the position clear in the way it words things.

You still have to arrange it. When you organise a friendly, the club appears as an option when it didn't before. It still has to be at a time when it's reasonable for the club to be free.

As a lower league manager, I now regularly arrange for away friendles. I can see quite clearly how we profit from them. I never realised this until this thread.

With Andy Smith banned for three games, Rothnie’s return from injury was timely. I would have given him an extra week, but needs must. I dropped a few underperforming players and took the rest down to Slough – just the kind of team you want to face when you need to restore some self-belief. We played well, and we won 2-0 with both goals courtesy of Innes Smith. We closed out 2025 on a high, safely ensconced in mid-table. New Year 2026 rolled around. We resolved to spend the year establishing the club DNA in our hearts, minds and bodies. I reminded the lads that when we go professional, not all will make the cut. Any who can’t get their lives in order so they can give the club 100%, or anyone who can’t make the mental adjustment, would be released. We’ve been within a shout of promotion or in danger of relegation this season, but there’s to be no slackening off. We’ve got six or seven months to make a winning mentality our muscle memory. Which is not to say we had to win our next match, against full-time ex-league outfit Barnet. We had a steady succession of Saturdays only - bar the cup tie(s), and I was looking for more consistency in our performances. I considered asking them to go a bit gentler and avoid all those cards (we lead the league for red cards with six, and are third on yellows), but reasoned it would undermine our DNA and lead to considerably less possession. Instead, I hoped that with experienced, they’d eventually learn to tackle more legitimately. We drew 2-2 with Barnet – it was a fair result and a decent performance against a stronger side, as Adam Szemeredi signed off on his time with us in a reserves game before departing for his home country of Hungary. Blackpool came in with a cash money offer for our goalkeeper, Andy Boylan. He really wanted to go, but the offer wasn’t enough and we couldn’t afford to lose him at this point. I made some vague assurances. They came back with a non-negotiable deal of six grand and a loan-back for the season. It wasn’t good enough, but Andy’s form had dipped in the last two games since his head was turned, and I knew he’d kick up if we rejected the offer. Dejectedly, we agreed. The day after forms were signed, Cardiff, Huddersfield and Sheffield Wednesday came in with offers worth double. Shane was fuming – negotiations is not the greatest skill. Amidst all the business shenanigans, a crazy game of football broke out in St. Albans with Benn Rostock scoring four in a 5-3 win. Then we got back to our habitual drawing ways at Darlington, with Harkiss getting both in a 2-2 tie. The underlyings were looking good - I'd hoped to trot out the same line-up for the next game - alas, we had two suspensions to deal with. Of course we did. We despatched Scarborough very tidily in a 4-1 win, and closed out January with a 2-2 draw against Kidderminster Harriers. If we’ve found any semblance of consistency this season, it’s our commitment to mid-table mediocrity.

Oh right - well, that's the point. Instead of coming on here all entitled, if he analyses the data he'll probably find his answers. It doesn't look like he's capable of doing that right now, so he needs to get acquainted with the Tactics forum, go in with some humility and learn something.

My defending graph looks the same as his - and here's the possession We don't win the ball BECAUSE we don't lose the ball, and our defenders don't come under much pressure. There are deep-dive threads on interpreting data in the Tactics forum.

At home to Oxford City, the after-effects of the Norwich massacre could still be felt. Millard led the line in place of Rostock, banished to the reserves, but we were still flat and owed our 2-2 draw to the determination of Danny Taylor. Our second- and third-stringers got a chance to impress me in the Regional Cup 4th Round tie against Open Goal Broomhill. In a crazy game, Benn Rostock came on late when we were losing, grabbed a late equaliser to make it 2-2 and then two more in extra time. We won 6-4. The draw for the next round sent us to Oldham, where we were going with our first team this weekend, the last game before Christmas. The extra time left us sparse of bodies for the bench. They’re a professional club on the path to recovery and it was a tough ask, but we were doing fine, winning 1-0 when Andy Smith took his turn in the red card stakes and we ended up going down 1-2. Results since introducing our “DNA”. A mixed bag, but there was always going to be a readjustment period. I’m already looking forward to next season when we turn professional. Many of the players are over the honeymoon period with the training facilities at Dingwall and are complaining about the extra workload – but when we’re full-time, and they can quit their part-time jobs and Highers, we should really push on.

A fair few of the supporters who paid to see us slaughtered on the Wednesday returned on the Saturday to see the second string put in a far better rear-guard effort against a superior team in the form of professional outfit Maidenhead United. Millard put us in the lead but we succumbed to the by now drearily predictable stoppage-time goal to draw 1-1. The result kept us in 10th spot as Maidenhead went top. The first team needed a win to get their heads back up after Norwich. We took them down to Dorking where Macangus made a valiant effort to stay on the pitch after his three-match suspension, but saw the other wingback, Cooper get redded after 12 minutes. That, combined with Rostock back in his depression, it was no surprise we didn’t have a single shot on target and were fortunate to only lose 0-1. Muir Morton's been in touch. I've told him not to worry, as we don't need fullbacks. The goalkeeper could be important as Preston North End are the latest club to snoop around Boylan. The centreback and striker look intriguing. We might need to lean on the Royal Academy to replenish our midfielders and wingbacks if they have any. As Muir points out, it's far too early to even speculate on that front, as they effectively recycle academy rejects from Inverness and Dingwall for us.

As mentioned earlier, my plan was somewhat undermined by both my left wingbacks getting three-match bans simultaneously, but we cracked on in the first game at Chippenham anyway. We played like Brazil for an hour, but we were up against a keeper plying the game of his life. The tactic is super-intensive and the boys will need time to get fit enough – as they tired and I dithered over substitutions, Chippenham struck and we fell 1-2. It was unlucky – ‘trust the process’ I told them back in the locker room. Our next opponent, Welling had a midweek game just three days before meeting us. Advantage The Monsters. And we outran them and controlled the game from start to finish, pacing ourselves well and cruising to a 2-0 win. As I failed to return calls from Reading, lying 20th in the Championship (tier 2), I prepared an entirely different squad for the visit of Hendon (21st in a 9th tier league) in the 3rd round of the Regional Cup. Asa Millard took his opportunity to start as a striker by bagging a hat-trick, and promising defender Jonathan Munro scored in a 5-2 trouncing. Refreshed, our first team scored an away win at Blyth Spartans with Danny Taylor converting a hat-trick of penalties in a 4-0 victory. The next weekend, taking on Havant AND Waterlooville was a step too far for Liam Macangus. With us winning, he got himself sent off again, and as a result we lost our way and lost the game 1-2. That boy’s for the high jump. The following Saturday, the second string did a better job and despatched basement-dwellers Wealdstone 3-1. The reason the first team didn’t play was due to the impending midweek FA Cup tie home to Norwich City. We could have played cautiously against Norwich City – should have, I suppose, with memories of home drubbings by Galway and Crystal Palace fresh in our minds, but I still reasoned if we were going to lose, we should go out all-guns blazing. And we did. Another heavy defeat, 1-6 in front of a sell-out crowd of 500. My only regret was starting Benn Rostock – I ought to have remembered he crumples in the spotlight, but it wouldn’t have made a difference to the outcome anyway. Additionally, Rothnie picked up an ankle-nack that will keep him out for six weeks, and none of these players will be fit to start the next game in three days against 2nd placed Maidenhead. A few regrets, actually. our seasonal reminder of who we really are

I used the 5-2-2-1 here for 4 months in my last season, when it worked great until it didn't. Now I'm returning to it and combining it with the insights from this video FM23 | Burton Albion - England DNA | Youth Academy Only | E1 Introduction to the England DNA - which I found thanks to a link from Cleon.

HER???? But seriously, you're going great. With restricted recruitment, you don't want to go too high too fast - you need to consolidate and nurture the young players to bring in or develop internally.

The guy who's done those videos has dozens about non-league Scottish clubs, many with interesting histories. Worth a subscribe.

I just finished a one-season save with 4 lower league dbs (Scotland, Wales, N. Ire and Rep Ire). I chose to manage a club in a league with the lowest reputation of the lot, which was level 7 in Wales - all amateur clubs with super-low reps. The same issue happened in my save. So I don't think just lowering the reputations will solve this problem. I even tried to make it more realistic by having a total of 4 amateur staff members - the manager, assman, one coach and a physio. NO recruitment department. The game (via the chairman and assman) still threw stupidly good available players at me each week. Most joined higher ranking clubs, but I could still regularly recruit hyper-upgrades to cause me to dominate my league. I'm not sure the non-contract fix will be a solution as you can release an inferior player to bring in a better one on the same salary. Someone might do a season trial save with another db that has L10 clubs as part-timers to see if they have the same issues or not. People new to your database or extremely lower league management generally might love all the winning though. Not everyone wants to make it harder. For those that do, like myself, you can make up your own self-imposed rules. I use a hide-attributes skin and run an academy intake-only campaign, with me starting off with no coaching badges and minimal playing experience.

One graph with no context doesn't tell you anything. Maybe you're a possession-hog and your defenders don't come under assault much.

I'd never thought of that, being so deep down the pecking order. Looking at last season's final top table, it seems no non-English sides qualified for Europe But then I found this - first preliminary round of the Champions League Teams the creator of the fantasy pyramid left out, or are too low even for his tier 9 of Scotland, Wales and the Irelands qualify. I doubt I'll ever get far enough for that to be relevant to this campaign. I'm waiting for a poster named 'angryscotsman' to release his fantasy Scottish ten-tier database in a month or so, which I will combine with a 10-tier English and discrete Welsh, Norn Irish and Rep Irish lower league add-ons (if my rig runs all that) and start a "Highlands & Islands DNA" campaign that hopefully will take me until FM24.

Looks like you either haven't put them in the 'editor data' folder, or your editor data folder is in the wrong place.

It's fair enough. When you start a journeyman save with no qualifications, it's your best chance of getting job offers.

I do love a good Scottish lower league campaign, seeing as I'm managing Loch Ness myself! Nessie Awakes! Have you seen these? The sad demise of a once great Scottish football club - Clydebank FC The MASSIVE CLUB that got COMPLETELY SCREWED!

It's totally different and much more challenging. You can't grab all those A+ stars who'd never join you in the real world; instead, you have to make the most of what you get. It means putting all your effort into finding the best staff and investing in infrastructure in order to gradually improve the quality of your intake. Promotions every season would be a disaster - each new intake needs two or three years to bed in. So you go for an evolutionary approach and accept set-backs with good grace. Also, you get to KNOW your boys - in the save I just finished, I'd have a player in for a couple of months then bin him when an upgrade came along. With a YA save, you're going to nurture these kids and see them grow over years. In the real lower leagues, like in this challenge, you can throw many of your new kids straight into league football too - you don't need to have them develop in the Under 18s for years like you would at a higher level. In my view, it's THE way to play starting in Level 10.

You have to be self-disciplined. I just did a season with an amateur side and recruitment was ridiculous. Every week the recruitment department was finding better and better players who were happy to come, so I was just constantly updating the squad and releasing players who'd been surpassed. I quit at the end - too easy - and returned to my Academy-Only Challenge. Now that's proper hard! There's a guy here doing a save where he can only recruit from his London Borough of Enfield. I like that.

The week included a practice match behind closed doors at Glenelg. I loved what I saw. I would never have contemplated asking 15- and 16-year-old kids to play roles such as Complete Wingback, Ball-Playing Defender or Libero, but that’s what ‘DNA’ is all about – developing rounded players with a host of skillsets while they’re so young – and by constantly training and implementing what they learn in matches, the muscle memory will remain. The formation is the one we used for four months last season – the 5-2-1-2 that the squad is familiar with, but the roles and duties are new. It will take time to bed in but it’s not completely alien really. It brings two 16-year-olds into the first team who’ve only played half a dozen games each – Blair Cooper looks more comfortable in the new wingback role than Innes Smith, And Johnie Rothnie has taken to the role of Segundo Volante quicker than Andy Smith or Jay Cook. You met ‘Coopy’ above – ‘Here’s Johnny’! And THIS is the front end of 'Highland DNA'

Depends on your club. Maybe there's a good hospital down the road.

The course was, for me, transformative. Rather than spelling it out exhaustively, it's all here in this video: Introduction to the England DNA - Burton Albion Youth Academy Only I will immediately set about inculcating new tactics and training. If results are adversely impacted in the short term, that will be no bad thing - we just need to stay in this league this season - one step back to go ten leaps forward, as it were.

I might have miscalculated a bit – I thought our squad was sufficient for rotation with two games a week but in fact by now we’re absolutely exhausted and not recovered as well as we should. Fortunately, our next two matches were at home, after which with huge relief, we move into the once-a-week phase (cup ties aside). The first was against Darlington. We were fortunate to get away with a point in a 1-1 draw when, astonishingly, BOTH our left wingbacks earned themselves red cards! The suspensions will hurt but the move to Saturdays-only will help, so long as another emergency debutant, Connan Lobban, steps up. two red cards and lengthy suspensions With Smith back on the right and Lobban filling in on the left, we hosted basement-dwellers Peterborough Sports and finally got ourselves three points with a 3-1 victory. Our goals all came in the first half hour – after that the pace fell right off and the boys dragged themselves over the line. We have a WEEK to recover for the first time this season! I plan to do much more than recover, however. I'm leaving all the training sessions in the trusted hands of my coaching staff and spending a week on observation at St. Georges' Park National Football Centre in Burton, England. It's part of my training for my Continental A coaching licence. My intention is to soak up their philosophy of creating and instilling an 'England DNA' and apply it here - a 'Highland DNA', if you like.