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The Long Road – Keymer and Hassocks (FM17) Using Dan BHTFC’s English Level 22 mod. Taking a club from the Conference North/South to the Champions league is an FM rite of passage. It’s a test of patience, hard work and your willingness to put up with managing frankly terrible players. I myself have an everlasting love of Dartford, having managed it for the first time with them on FM11. For those who have truly taken leave of their senses, though, the true challenge is to go even lower. Thus I present the craziest Challenge I’ve ever taken on in all my FM days – Keymer and Hassocks. K&H are a pub team about 7 miles North of Brighton, in the beautiful setting of the South Downs. When I say pub team, I mean pub team. Their logo shows a man drinking beer, showing the kind of character that modern football logos lack, designed as they are by corporate design bigwigs. They play at Adastra Park, a lovely Parish green that according to the internet boasts a Garden of Remembrance, a Community Pavilion, football pitches, a cricket pitch, a bowling green, tennis courts, a skate park, children’s play areas, and adult fitness equipment. The description ‘football pitches’ is a bit misleading though as satellite images reveal one solitary football pitch. They start in the Mid Sussex Football league Division 9, from which by my calculations it will take 21 promotions to reach the promised land of the Premier League. Upon arrival, my team looked vaguely decent, entirely made up of young auto-generated regens. This was quickly disproved when I signed the mighty Scott Walker, who immediately made my best players look frankly awful by comparison. I therefore decided to release the entire starting squad and begin again. Believe me, it’s not easy to find decent players willing to sign amateur contracts for a club with a presumably single digit reputation. Still, just about anyone was better than what I started with. Looking up the divisions, I checked out clubs in the higher divisions. To my surprise, I was able to sign players listed as the ‘key player’ from clubs ten divisions higher, in the Mid Sussex Premier League! These players were just as bad as the players I started with though, leading me to two conclusions: 1- The starting reputation of all the clubs across all 10 divisions of the Mid Sussex leagues is the same or very similar 2- The CA of all the players in all the clubs is also very similar. As such a squad capable of crushing the bottom division should be just as capable of the next 9 promotions, with replacements only needed for ageing players or those poached by ‘higher division clubs’ such as those in the heady heights the Southern Combination Leagues and above.

I'm aware that with the delegation of responsibilities to other members of staff (including Director of Football, Chief Scout, Assistant Manager etc), you can do a workaround of this on FM 19, but a real life version instead would be incredible. Currently the manager has the option to control both the playing side (Head Coach) and the business side (Director of Football) of the club. Some players much prefer one aspect over the other, and find themselves bogged down with aspects they don't enjoy, so alongside being able to select the current manager role, it'd be good to be able to select different management roles to focus on your area of enjoyment. Start New Game, Add New "Manager", Management Role: - Manager - which is current FM mode & allows a lot of autonomy of hiring/firing Director of Football, Other Staff etc. (A more traditional approach to management in the Ferguson / Wenger style) Currently this allows you to micro-manage every aspect of football, but sometimes you can irreparably damage the club (e.g. unrealistic transfers over 48 months, expensive sacking of all staff etc.) - Head Coach - New Role - You control the playing side: tactics, managing games, interacting with press, players & coaches. (A more continental approach e.g. Guardiola with Txiki Begiristain) In this mode you won't be able to interfere with the club's existing scouting network and director of football role. Means you have less control over the financial / club side, and have to work with a DoF to scout / find / buy players - DoF finalises contracts / transfer negotiations etc. This role will streamline the business side, so you just select your ideal targets (& backup targets), just like in real life and try to manage the team on the pitch. - Director of Football - New Role - You control the business side: You finalise all negotiations for players, transfers (in/out). You work with the chief scout to establish scouting networks to find your next star on the cheap (e.g. Mahrez, Kante etc in the manner that a club like Porto or PSV do with their scouting networks). You have to establish a good relationship with agents and sound out whether players would be interested in a move (& time it well, e.g. while your club is playing well). You'd have to work with the manager to identify targets, the manager may want 1 profile of player (e.g. Mourinho wanting players in their prime with low re-sale value e.g. Perisic, Alderweirald) vs the DoF or the Club wanting a different profile of player (e.g. Ed Woodwood wanting to retain younger players Mourinho wanted rid of who can improve with time e.g. Martial & Pogba). Some clubs like the big Turkish clubs like to sign ageing stars to boost their profile, so this may suit the hiring of a manager with that tendency. Then as a DoF your job is to find such targets and bring them to the club. You will report to the board and have their confidence over deals & whether they fit the profile of player the club wants to sign (like in the current manager transfer confidence), and you could also have manager confidence (how happy they are with your signings for them, whether they agree with your signings) and fan confidence (see how Roma's fans turned on DoF Monchi after he sold Nainggolan and Strootman to bring young players in to the club). The key to doing a good job would be juggling the 3 confidences successfully, while managing the club's finances. Manager / Fans / Board could interact with you via the press, and your level of control and input may fluctuate in relation to the manager's strength. If the manager doesn't agree with your signing, it may be that he refuses to play them (like Mourinho and Shevchenko), and this may affect your re-sale value of the player etc. A good director of football should (along with interaction from the manager) be able to convince transfer targets that their club is the right one for them (e.g. Marcel Brands convincing the likes of Andre Gomes and Lucas Digne to come from Barcelona to Everton when this may be unlikely on football manager). Some clubs may only have room for a Manager, while others may want a DoF and Head Coach model. It would be interesting to see if you could pair an online game, where one player is a DoF, while the other is Head Coach, and you have to work co-operatively to succeed. Just an idea to expand the game, and allow players more control over the areas of the game they find most interesting.

As I am from Holland, all we know and can do in football is to buy cheap and sell for a profit. I often find myself replicating this in FM; buying a cheap Colombian talent for 1 million Euro's, develop the player and then sell them once they're in their early 20's for a profit. After some years I often have a lot of zeros in the bank while buying and selling a lot of players. Sometimes I foolishly let my Director of Football do the bidding and then when it's time to sell I see this message and I facepalm: "Club X gets 40% of Player Y's transfer fee".. I noticed that during a lot of my games Directors of Football pretty much automatically offer a 40% sell on clause for young talents. For instance, if a player is valued at 100k and the asking price is 200k-500k, they'll offer something like: 300k + 40% sell on clause. They even do this if you have 100M+ in the bank. The worst part is that often in the situation mentioned, you can offer 400k without the clause and they'll accept it as well. Maybe it depends on the Director of Football you have at the club, but in any case I think it would be adding realism to the game if you can give extra instructions to your DoF. Some options I could think of are: "Never offer X clause" or "Maximum Sell on clause is 10%" or "Pay X% in cash". Cheers!

Hi When playing as Liverpool (Or any club who uses their recruitment structure for that matter) why don't targets or signings have to be agreed by the transfers committee or taken from the pool of players scouted and shortlisted as a committee?

Currently, the DoF can suggest players for you to sign on a transfer, on loan, end of contract or free transfer for a given position or role. Would it be possible to add an option where by the DoF can also suggest players with potential in a given position or role?

Are there any advantages to having a DoF other than helping you scout and sign players? I only ask because I never employ one, but I'm wondering if it's hardcoded to increase your reputation, or secretly it attracts players a bit more or one that would not necessarily interested before? Or any other hidden reasons it might be beneficial.

Hello everyone As stated in my topic, I am missing this position in my Football Manager game. Is anyone else missing this position? I was looking at some guides on how to recruit better youth, and in my football manager game I look for the job position "Director of Football" but it doesn't show that position. I can only see Director, Manager Director, General Manager (x2). In Football Manager Editor I get the same results, there is no Director of Football anymore?? Thank you for the help

I´m currently playing FM16 and noticed that my DoF has been acting rather weirdly. Whenever I add a player to the ¨Transfer Target¨ list all my DoF seems to do is offer a bid of 0GBP for the player, even though the player in question is worth roughly 5 million. Obviously the bid fails and the DoF reports back to me saying it was not possible to arrange a transfer at that time. This has happened on a couple of occasions on my save with different players. I´m not too sure why he is offering 0 GBP for the player, when I have 17 million GBP in the transfer budget and my scouts believe would be very interested in joining us and the club would be willing to sell the player for around 10 million GBP. After my DoF failed I tried bidding for the player myself and had a bid successfully accepted and successfully negotiated a contract. I was wondering if anyone else had encountered this problem and if so how they had fixed it? Or is it a bug?

I sometimes play with the settings that the Director of Football is in charge of contract renewals and transfers, as I think that's quite a bit how it really is "out there", at least a lot of places. But then I'd like to be able to talk to my DoF, to get a sort of agreement on what players to buy (and also, to sell). If I arrive at a new club, with a DoF, and I plan to play a certain style or formation, then I think it would be appropriate to have a discussion with the DoF, so that I could tell him what kind of players I believe we need to aquire. As it is now, suddenly he's gone and bought two LBs (one who's also a CB, but still), and brought in another on loan, while we had one in the squad already, who was capable of playing first team, full time. (I know I have the option of rejecting these transfers before they're completed, but that's not the point) On the other side of the transfer sector, I'd like to talk with him about the squad, and agreeing on who in the first team squad we could offload (instead of going through each player and setting him to the "unwanted list", this could be part of a "pre-season meeting" between the DoF and myself). In those cases where I arrive at a club, and a DoF's in place, the realistic thing would be to have him in charge of transfers, but as Head Coach, I presume I'm entitled to have my say in what kind of players he should try to acquire, instead of him just going on a "shopping spree" all by himself. Of course, there could (should/would) be the odd player he brings in, who I'd strongly disagree with, but the main "transfer plan" should be laid between us. Thoughts? -M