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I've had as little dabble with [FM20] managing RB Salzburg in Austria and the game seems reasonably stable. (No crashes at all for me so far). I wasn't really feeling the save though so have decided to start a proper one. # I've started unemployed, with no badges and with just Sunday League previous history and all the Nordic Nations available have been activated. I played in some of these leagues in FM19 and even won some of them, but others will be completely new to me if and when I get there. Last year I started in Iceland, but in the Icelandic First Division the clubs are still professional, so I think I have to start lower than that if possible and look for something part-time or even fully Amateur. That doesn't mean I won't give something else a go 1st just to get things up and running, (remember I started with a B-Team in FM19), but I plan on getting to the very bottom and then making my way from there. The game start date is Apr 2019.

Welcome to Nordicland. (Thanks @XaW) So I was getting a bit bored in Brazil, (winning, winning and more winning is ok, but I need more), although it has been pointed out by @kidthekid that I left prematurely without winning the Copa Libertadores so I'm sure I will go back and do that at some point. I have never managed properly in Scandinavia, (other than a damn good stint in Iceland), and this is an idea for a FM20 save so I am testing out the lay of the land so to speak in anticipation. For some reason the @claassendatabases didn't work when I installed them, (I think he only updates the megapack after a certain time), so I'm not playing with a huge database for each Nation and instead am playing "out of the box". For that reason too, the Faroe Islands are not playable unfortunately. I saw that the Finnish structure is now ranked lower than that of Iceland, (certainly didn't use to be the case), so I decided immediately I was going to start there and I was obviously starting in the lowest League which is the First Division, (YKKÖNEN in real life). As is my style I simply looked at who had the best infrastructure and while all the Training and Youth Facilities were much of a muchness, I could see quickly that in terms of the Youth Intake, there was 1 club that was ahead of the curve. So in I jumped to...... Klubi-04. Everything looks great. We even have some new signings joining us. Background. The Squad. Looks amazing if I'm honest. No less than 14 out of 18 players have 5.0 PA. That's astonishing. Where is the catch...... Facilities. Look amazing. Finances. We have £1.7M in the bank. What the hell!!! This is madness. The U20's squad is simply phenomenal. What on Earth have I stumbled into? Oh hang on. I know what's happened. I have been here before. We are a B-Team and we can't get promoted. That's fine. This is a decent way to start the save for me as I start with minimum reputation and badges, and playing a season will be fine and probably better than holidaying until the end of the season and then taking over a newly promoted club, (that isn't a B-Team). just a point of note by the way...... I wonder what would happen if HJK got relegated and Klubi-04 won the 2nd tier at the same time?

If, after reading some of my long-winded drivel, you somehow find that you could do with more of my drivel to read, then a lot of my stuff can be found in the following threads. Some of the threads will be mine, and others will have shared contributions. Either way, if you like what you read in this thread, then the following threads might be enjoyable too. If on the other hand you think I am boring, need to get a life, and what the hell is it with all those nicknames and will you just shut up about Professionalism, tutoring and just go and buy some players, then the following is probably not for you. [FM17] Football, fire and ice: The inside story of Iceland's remarkable rise. In the build-up to EURO 2016, I was reading a Guardian article that I was linked to on twitter, and while the whole article was great, there was a single little paragraph that resonated with me and the way that I play FM. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/jun/08/iceland-stunning-rise-euro-2016-gylfi-sigurdsson-lars-lagerback?CMP=share_btn_tw "Take some small task and do it to death". That sounds like my mantra for FM. The concise very definition of the way I play. From a Target Man winning 67 consecutive headers in FMwhateveritwas, (just because someone said it couldn't be done), and San Marino winning the World Cup, (again, you can't do it without cheating!), to goal-scoring GK's, (that's ridiculous, you will never get past 50!) and Youth only saves, (boring, I stopped reading at the top of page 1), I suppose the way I play FM has always been...... unusual. So Iceland seemed to suit me, (and of course I have never managed there which is an attraction too). Another attraction is that we rarely see others managing in Iceland. San Marino is all the rage now, (at least it was last year, even when you kept getting sacked 8 years into the NT job), and Gibraltar is popular with the official structure add-on being released every season now. But Iceland are neither too rubbish to be a "proper challenge" for idiots like me, nor good enough to be managed in more commonly. As for which club I was going to be, well I was torn. Initially, my plan was, (as usual), to go on holiday for 1 season and then select one of the teams that were promoted into the bottom playable League, but this was different. The article I linked to above mentioned Breidablik specifically and how, with the arrival of the economic meltdown, they were the 1st to discard expensive foreigners and rely on home produced Youth *** I was reluctant to start with a team in the Úrvalsdeild, (that's the Premier League to you and me), so instead I looked lower down in 1. deild karla, (that's the First Division to you and me). Semi-Pro, (check), Synthetc pitch, (check), Council owned stadia, (check), Great youth facilities, (check) and Well established youth recruitment, (check). Predicted to finish 7th of 12 teams in the FM16 game. No affiliated clubs, (so they're not a feeder which I was worried about), not a single non-Icelandic player, (check), and just 1 single player with senior International experience. Jóhannes Karl Guðjónsson doesn't ring any bells to me, but he has played at Villa, Wolves, Leicester, Burnley and Huddersfield. I may not recognise the name, but I certainly recognise the career. That's Joey Gudjonsson to you and me. Handknattleiksfélag Kópavogs is a bit of a mouthful, but thankfully they are more commonly known as HK. The club dates back to 1969, but was officially established on 26 January 1970. Originally only a handball team, with the football team established in 1992. The summer of 2007 saw the football team play for the first time in the Icelandic top division, the Úrvalsdeild. The club were relegated in their second season to the second tier and were again relegated to the third tier in 2011. I've been going through the current (ISL) senior International squad and seeing how many, (if any), have been produced by HK. Hólmar Örn Eyjólfsson is a centre-back who moved from HK on to West Ham before joining Bochum in Germany and onto Rosenborg in Norway. Rúrik Gíslason is a winger who moved on to Anderlecht and Charlton, before going through Viborg and OB in Denmark before settling at FC Kobenhavn. Kolbeinn Sigþórsson is one of the stars of the current (ISL) National side and although the big striker is currently at Nantes in France, he was snapped up by Dutch side AZ after just 5 games and 1 goal for HK in his debut season as a 16 year old. Good performances for AZ brought a £4.3M move to Ajax, but despite a decent scoring record in Holland, he was sold at a loss to Nantes last year, (where he certainly didn't set the World alight). So there is some degree of pedigree to the players that the club has produced in the past and certainly enough to fill me with optimism. I wonder if we produced a certain young man by the name of Orri Freyr Oskarsson though...... No. It seems that he was produced by Þór and whether it was as a result of a collapsed lung, or a change in name, he was never able to reach the heights in real life that many of us, (including myself), saw him achieve in game. Some say he was greedy, but I put this down to him actually being deaf in one ear, (it's true I tell you!) The reason for his decline from scoring 48 goals in 92 games for Þór could well be down to the serious issue of a collapsed lung, but it's equally probably that it's as a result of his pre-match diet of hamburger, chips and Pepsi, (again, I tell you it's true!), but you also have to remember that the (ISL) leagues were sponsored by..... yes, you guessed it, Pepsi, back then. I have had a look at the FM16 HK squad and it was pleasing that although all were Icelandic, we did have a single solitary 2nd Nationality. (I love a 2nd Nationality for some reason, possibly because I am English but to Irish and Scottish parents). That the 2nd Nationality was Nepalese, (yes really), is just a bonus, because I have never seen a single Nepalese FM player ever never mind about had one in my squad. I hope he's still in the FM17 squad. The first thing that jumps out at me, (looking at the FM16 HK squad), is that where as the default setting for a Serbian player in FM seemed to be between Balanced and Fairly Ambitious, (neither of which I am keen on at all), the default personality for an Icelandic player, seems to be between Balanced and Fairly Sporting. Fairly Sporting Spo 15-20, Pro & Det & Amb & Loy all 1-14 That doesn't look good at all. (Pro) and (Det) both at 1-14. If it was Sporting rather than (F.Sport), things would be better because it would look like this. Sporting Spo 18-19, Det 1-9, Pro 5-20 Potentially lower (Det), but potentially higher (Pro). Looking at the squad, (again, I am talking about the FM16 squad, then I have 1x (F.Pro) player, and that's it. The actual make-up of last season squad is as follows. 14x (Bal) 1x (L.Hearted) 1x (F.Pro) 10x (F.Sport) 3x (F.Loyal) 1x (F.Det) 3x (F.Amb) 1x (Amb) 1x (Sport) 1x (Resilient) 1x (Honest) 1x (Spirited) I think it's safe to say that we are going to need some tutors on the hurry-up. With that in mind, I need to have a think about what my self-imposed rules are going to be. In my Partizan save I started off by saying that I would only sign Serbian players, but then relaxed it to allow myself to sign non-Serbian non-playing tutors, but obviously Iceland doesn't have quite the infrastructure that Serbia has. I'm tempted to relax my initial rules to include all Scandinavians, (and still allow myself to sign non-playing tutors from absolutely everywhere), but with the idea being that I will slowly wean myself off non-Icelandic Scaninavians and then ultimately, even non-home-grown Icelanders. I'm not sure how realistic this is going to be, but that's my thinking anyway. Having never managed in Iceland, (and only just becoming aware that they have a rule of a maximum of 3 non-EU players in the squad, (why don't England do that?), I'm not sure at this stage what sort of players are going to appear on my scouting list, but I guess I will use the above as a start and maybe refine/relax things as I go depending on how I am getting on. I just have a Senior squad and an U19 squad which is a little strange for me, so it seems that from quite an early stage in the save I am going to have to improve at selling/releasing players and/or get a feeder club going in order to get some of the fringe players loaned out and playing competitive football. We will probably need to get promoted before we can loan players out into a playable league, (and there is absolutely no guarantee of that), and even then the 1.deild, (Icelandic 2nd League), has a rule whereby each match squad can only have a maximum of 4 loan players, (so 1 single feeder club in the league below is just not going to cut it). Maybe I shold load the Faroe Island sructure, but that isn't going to be playable from the off so I guess that's a no-go. Decisions decisions decisions. Something that should be mentioned at this juncture is that in real life it takes 7 years for foreigners to gain Icelandic Nationality, (but only 4 years for other Scandinavians). It should also be mentioned that being born in Iceland to non-Icelandic parents does not in itself entitle you to Icelandic citizenship. The next... problem, predicament, whatever you want to call it, is that because it's very cold in Iceland, their season actually runs from May to September, so by the time I start my save, we will in all likelyhood, gone through pre-season and...... actually, hang on, that's not right. If their season finishes in September, and the game doesn't come out until Novemeber, then in my FM16 save, why am I looking at a fixture list which says that we have already gone through pre-season, and played 6 out of 7 Deildabikar Group B games? (No, I don't have a clue either but we will see in the 2nd season I guess). Ok. This is a disaster. I have just looked to extend the contract of 1 player and the option for an additional "option" on the player did not exist. Is this an Icelandic thing? This could kill the save before it begins! Right from the off my plan is to select players based on PA rather than CA, and hope that I have enough guile about me in order that we don't get relegated and I don't get sacked. Based upon previous saves, this is not a foregone conclusion. 2 go down from a league of 12, so I just have to finish higher than 2 others. That's doable, (even with 16 year olds, isn't it....)