FM12: Swansea City - Clwb Pêl-droed Dinas Abertawe

[DandyDon]

I'm thinkin to use 1 DM and 1 MC, with the role DM support and MC support. With this change it won't be a big gap between defense and attack.

Yeah that can work fairly well. Did pretty much the same thing on an Arsenal save. Good luck with your Swans save

[Chicha_14]

Nice one...never managed to play a save long enough to have that happen. Well done

How many seasons in are you now?

Just about to start my 17th season. Lost in the Champions League final to Dortmund last season ending are 6 consecutive titles. Won the Premier League to keep the run going of 5. Desperately want back that European title though because my aim is to match Real Madrid's current record of 10.

[II McColl II]

Hi everyone

Nice to see the swansea save is still getting a good amount of interest. Its been quite a long time since i last posted on here and haven't played much FM recently either, ive got a blackpool save lined up then i will be hoping to finish FM with Swansea.

Good luck to everyone managing the swans and i enjoy reading peoples updates

[Welshace]

can you give us a little info on your tactic?

[DandyDon]

2015/16 - Season Progress

After the success of last season and the big spending during the summer we've been in fantastic form for the first half of the new campaign. We actually topped the league for a long stretch, we've fought our way to another League Cup semi-final and we dominated our Champion's League group, finishing with a 100% record and qualifying for the knockout stages with 2 matches left. The summer arrivals have all played their part pretty successfully. Abel Hernandez scoring 20 goals before christmas from 25 games, 8 goals in Europe. Sneijder has added a little extra class in the heart of the midfield, and popped up with the odd spectacular goal, while the 2 youngsters Sultan and Geison have both made around 20 appearances and never looked out of place.

Despite our impressive form in the league, and being the only team to beat Man City so far, we weren't able to hold on to top spot once City really started to perform. Their defence has been pretty amazing this season, and though their attacking players started slow they've started to pick up now and nipped past us into top spot during the festive period.

League so far

Champs League

For all our effort and impressive form in the Champs League group stage our reward was a draw against Barcelona in the 1st Knockout round......(aye thanks a bunch UEFA....)

Lennert De Bondt

This is the latest arrival at the club, and one of the funniest bits of business I've done on FM. We originally scouted and bid for this player back in the 2013/14 season when he was at Standard Liege, and as soon as our bid was accepted Chelsea swanked in and offered him double the wages and off he went.

Fast forward a couple seasons and having played barely any games for Chelsea in 2 nad a half seasons he ends up on the transfer list and Chelsea offer him to us just for £5.75 million after the summer window closes. I decided to meet their asking price and the deal is agreed and confirmed. A week or two later and having suffered an injury crisis amongst the strikers and Chelsea have to start playing de Bondt and he goes on to score 11 league goals in 13 matches. Going into the New year is their top scorer and 3rd in the league standings, and of course on the 1st of January off he goes.....

He made his debut for us straight away in the FA Cup against Barnsley, and grabbed himself a 4 goal haul in a 5-1 triumph, 4 days later he opens the scoring in his league debut away during a 2-0 win....at Chelsea....isn't karma lovely

EDIT: January not looking so great all of a sudden, having to suffer smugness from Tony Pulis as his Villa side beat us 2-0 and Wigan just beat us in first leg of the LC semi-final

[DandyDon]

Looks like your tactic is coming together very nicely Mack

[DBurns]

Just got past the summer transfer window but can't get of my Barca save so won't be continuing my Swansea for a while yet but I will definitely come back to the save at some point as it seems like an interesting save, possibly once the transfer window closes IRL and the updates come out.

Good luck!

[DandyDon]

Definitely the best performance by my Swansea team so far. Chelsea didn't even manage 1 shot on goal during the first half and the result might have been even worse if Sinclair hadn't missed a penalty. No surprises about the star of the show, that man Gylfi yet again with two free kicks and two screamers from outside the area. He's hit an incredible run of form for me in the final third of the season, followed this up with 2 goals and an assist against West Brom.

Despite our incredible form though it looks like Man City are going to win the title. They're six points ahead of us at the moment and their defence was in amazing form for a while, didn't concede a league goal for almost 2 months or something sick like that.

[DandyDon]

2015/16 Season - Finale, finally

Finally getting to the end of my season on the Swansea save, slow progress over the last couple weeks after being distracted by some Steam sale purchases and the Olympics. I finally knuckled down after work at the weekend and got to the end of the league campaign.

In the end we were unable to defend our league title, as I predicted Man City proved just too strong in the second half of the season. Despite matching our points total from our title winning campaign and scoring more goals, we ended up 10 points behind City at the death. January proved a costly month in league terms as they opened up a 6 point gap, and our great form in the cup competitions meant that fixtures just piled up on us and injuries and suspensions meant something had to give.

In Europe and the Cups we were pretty unstoppable overall. In the League cup we had a bit of a scare in the first leg of the semi final where we were comprehensively outplayed by Wigan. Fortunately they only secured a 1-0 win for all their efforts and we tunred the tables at the Liberty, battering them 4-0. In the final we beat West Brom 3-1, fairly comfortably. In the FA Cup our toughest game was again in the semi final, where we needed extra time to see off Aston Villa. Two goals in the second half of extra time finally securing a 3-1 win and our place in the final. Liverpool were the opponents at Wembley, but they never really got going and we were 3-0 up before they exerted any real pressure in the second half. A lone Andy Carroll goal their only consolation as we won 4-1 and secured the FA Cup for the first time under my management.

We still have 1 game left to go in the season, after an amazing run in Europe we've somehow found ourselves in the Champions League final where we'll face Marseille. After qualifying top of our group we've managed to get past Barcelona, Shakhtar and finally Bayer Leverkusen in the knockout rounds. We almost blew our chance in the semi finals (for some reason we seem to make it really difficult for ourselves at that stage!), losing 2-0 away at Leverkusen we managed to take the tie to extra time right at the death in the home leg with Belhanda scoring a second for us in the 3rd minute of injury time. We couldn't grab a 3rd however and eventually squeeked through on penalties.

Final League Table

Results - Jan to May

Overall, despite surrendering the league crown to Man City, it's been a fantastic season with a domestic cup double and might get even better if we can just keep it going against Marseille. The majority of the players have had great seasons, playing well when called on and generally the bulk of the squad are averaging over 7.2 rating. (There's a few fringe players who haven't played too many games who have lower averages, and a couple 1st team players who have had fairly disappointing seasons such as Andile Jali and Kevin Strootman, but their places will be under threat next season with the likes of Geison starting more games).

The addition of Abel Hernandez has made us a lot more clinical in attack and he actually finished as the league top scorer with 29 goals from his 35 league appearances. (he has 44 in all competitions so far with one game left to go, from a total of 52 appearances) His understudy, the young Belgian striker De Bondt managed to add 13 goals from 15 appearances after he arrived, 10 of those in the cup, added to the 14 goals he scored for Chelsea before January meant the 19yo scored an impressive 27 goals in all competitions. Scott Sinclair, Gylfi, and our Argentine wonderkid Sultan all got in to double figures for goals as well and would have been joined by Jack Wilshere who was our most in form player when he had his leg broken playing against Arsenal (of all teams) at the start of March. That injury really hampered us in the league run in as Wilshere had been one of our most creative players and combined with losing Sami Khedira in midfield for quite a while proved costly in the end I think.

Win or lose in the final against Marseille I'm delighted with the squad I've got now and don't have any concrete plans for transfer action over the summer. I may try and sign Kurt Zouma, the young French defender from St. Etienne as i've been trying to unsetttle him for a while, or I may spend big on a top class goalkeeper but as yet I'm undecided.

EDIT: Couldn't quite pull off the dream cup treble...lost 1-0 to Marseille in the Champs League final, despite dominating the match. Only signing so far during the summer has been 33 year old Pepe from Real madrid for £900,000. Signed on a years contract to give some cover in defence and midfield. Still mulling over signing another keeper.

[AlexLightsaber]

Just Finished my first season with Swansea and came 3rd:

I only signed Cristian Tello from Barca for 1.5M and ive just been given 42m to spend for the 2nd season, any suggestions on who to sign.

[DBurns]

Fantastic fifth season DandyDon and unlucky in the Champions League. Man City must have had a great league campaign but I'm sure you're not too far off catching them next season.

[DandyDon]

Fantastic fifth season DandyDon and unlucky in the Champions League. Man City must have had a great league campaign but I'm sure you're not too far off catching them next season.

Cheers I didn't mind missing out on the League and European glory all that much as I was really happy with the way we played and how attacking we looked and we gave it a real shot.

As far as this season goes it's November and so far I'm matching them at the moment, but it's feeling an awful lot like that season just gone. Man City's defence is just scarily good and I've lost Super Gylfi for 5 months to injury, so he's going to miss the crucial games in January which is pretty much where we lost it in the season just finished.

In other news I realised I must have missed an announcement by the board back in May as I was on the boardroom screen and was shocked to see that we have a new stadium in development, due to be completed in 2019. Not sure how I managed to miss that!

[DBurns]

Cheers I didn't mind missing out on the League and European glory all that much as I was really happy with the way we played and how attacking we looked and we gave it a real shot.

As far as this season goes it's November and so far I'm matching them at the moment, but it's feeling an awful lot like that season just gone. Man City's defence is just scarily good and I've lost Super Gylfi for 5 months to injury, so he's going to miss the crucial games in January which is pretty much where we lost it in the season just finished.

In other news I realised I must have missed an announcement by the board back in May as I was on the boardroom screen and was shocked to see that we have a new stadium in development, due to be completed in 2019. Not sure how I managed to miss that!

Suppose it also gives you something to aim for in the next few seasons as opposed to winning them year after year!

None of your other midfielders step up in his absence or are they not up to Gylfi's standards?

How did you mange to miss that!?! That will help increase the revenue which will only help to minimise the gap between you and Man City surely!

Keep it going!

[DandyDon]

Have no idea how I missed it...must have been one of those items in my inbox that I was rapidly clicking through in the wee small hours of the morning while I was trying to get the season finished before hitting the sack

So I have no idea how large the new ground is going to be or anything.

My other AMCs are all pretty damn good, Wilshere, Belhanda, Isco and my Argentine regen Sultan. I'm not worried about their ability or creativity but none of them are quite as consistent a goal threat in that position as Gylfi is....and those long range bombs of his have a way of turning real crucial games for us. Having said that Hernandez is on a real hot patch of form, mid Novemeber and he's already scored nearly 24 goals in all competitions.

[DBurns]

A pleasant surprise all the same!

Will be interesting to see just how much of an expansion there is!

Hernandez, as in Chico? I need to read over your past few posts if it is as I must have missed that signing!!

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Can see Swansea being an interesting save after the window closes with no Allen and no Gylfi but having that £15m (or most of it) to replace that creativity in midfield and improve the squad. My Newcastle is only a temporary save until the post-transfer windows updates are released so may even use that to look at potential signings!

[deejay10]

I started a new Swansea save, basically just because of how improved Allen, Caulker, Williams Britton and Dyer were.

Had a decent first season finished 8th and made both cup semifinals, with Gylfi the star performer with 17 goals, 23 assists! But took a few heavy losses away from home as well while I was adjusting tactically. Sinclair also had a good season chipping in with 13 goals. Graham got 16 goals and 13 assists, but thats misleading, half of those goals were in the cups, and he had too many poor league games.

2nd season and Allen has really improved and is now vital to the midfield, looks a great allround midfielder. Spent all my summer budget on: Gylfi for £5.75m and £20.5k a week contract!, Caulker for £7m, Mark Davies for £3.1m and Nathan Redmond for £8m. Redmond looks like he has a lot of potential, but a long way to go still before he can be a star winger.

[DandyDon]

Hernandez, as in Chico? I need to read over your past few posts if it is as I must have missed that signing!!

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Can see Swansea being an interesting save after the window closes with no Allen and no Gylfi but having that £15m (or most of it) to replace that creativity in midfield and improve the squad. My Newcastle is only a temporary save until the post-transfer windows updates are released so may even use that to look at potential signings!

Abel Hernandez from Palermo...but the other Hernandez is just behind him in the goalscoring stakes at the moment.

I think Swansea could be a very interesting save when FM13 comes out, I'll probably be setting one up anyways. Feel a bit sorry for them irl to lose their manager, Allen and miss out on Gylfi over the summer.

@deejay10

£5.75 mill is a bargain for Gylfi, great price

Well done on getting Caulker in permanently too, Spurs wouldn't budge below £10 mill for me. Joe Allen is still a regular in my squad 6 seasons in, real solid player, consistent and reliable hasn't had too many problems with injury. Still have him, Vorm, Taylor and Sinclair as regulars from the original squad and all of them playing pretty well.

[DBurns]

Just seen on Sky Sports that Kyle Bartley is having a medical at Swansea and reminded me of this post when I was about to start a Swansea save:

Caulker did a good job for me in 1st season, but Spurs wanted over £10 mill for him in the summer...and I only wanted to spend big on making Gylfi a Swansea player at that point. He ended up going to Norwich a couple seasons later for just £2.2 mill, but he's been struggling formwise there.

If Kyle Bartley is no longer on loan at Rangers in this update I'd recommend having a look at him. Seems to be quite an underrated FM player, he's doing a great job for me at the moment. Been a real bargain for us. Are you looking at buying an AMC since Gylfi won't be there?

Abel Hernandez from Palermo...but the other Hernandez is just behind him in the goalscoring stakes at the moment.

I think Swansea could be a very interesting save when FM13 comes out, I'll probably be setting one up anyways. Feel a bit sorry for them irl to lose their manager, Allen and miss out on Gylfi over the summer.

Oh yes Abel of course you told me that on the Newcastle thread.

Yes, definitely will be interesting with the loss of two of their best players from last year.

[DandyDon]

Just seen on Sky Sports that Kyle Bartley is having a medical at Swansea and reminded me of this post when I was about to start a Swansea save:

Oh yes Abel of course you told me that on the Newcastle thread.

Yes, definitely will be interesting with the loss of two of their best players from last year.

Funny how often FM transfers seem to come true in real life (mind you that might just be because of the sheer amount of signings made )

Hopefully the Swansea style of play and ethic that's been installed in the side since before Brendan Rodgers was there will see them cope with the losss of those players. Of the existing Swansea squad who are still at the club in my save Neil Taylor is having a fantastic season at the moment, Joe Allen is playing well as ever. Vorm has finally lost his number 1 spot to Marc Andre ter Stegen while Scott Sinclair has joined Gylfi on the long term injury list.

[DBurns]

Funny how often FM transfers seem to come true in real life (mind you that might just be because of the sheer amount of signings made )

Hopefully the Swansea style of play and ethic that's been installed in the side since before Brendan Rodgers was there will see them cope with the losss of those players. Of the existing Swansea squad who are still at the club in my save Neil Taylor is having a fantastic season at the moment, Joe Allen is playing well as ever. Vorm has finally lost his number 1 spot to Marc Andre ter Stegen while Scott Sinclair has joined Gylfi on the long term injury list.

That is true although still funny when you see a transfer happen in real life that also happened on your game!

It should do. They still have the majority of that squad plus the £15 million from the sale of Allen to reinvest!

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On a sidenote, I can't stick to any FM save due to the transfer window and rumours tempting me to try saves with different teams but I've decided that once the updates come out after the window closes I'll be starting saves with Swansea and Barcelona.

[Welshace]

bartley is a top signing and should do brilliantly next to williams..

in truth i think swansea just need a replacement for Allen in midfield and possibly another goalscorer .. and with the 15mil , they should be able to do so with any luck

[Gary_Parker]

Morning guys.

I just started a game with Swansea last night, having a bit of trouble getting the possession to fall into place but doing very well in the results. Its January and i'm joint top with Man Utd after beating them 1-0 at home. I'm sitting in work just now bored so i'll throw up a couple of screen shots when I get home and figure out the Steam Community picture library thing.

I've not signed a lot of players in, Vossen (really toned down stats from last year). Cristian Tello and Craig Dawson are my main ones, Luke Shaw has joined my youth ranks too. I've also brought in Gregg Wylde on loan as well as Martin Montoya to give Rangel some back up.

I'm playing a 4-1-2-2-1 formation, Britton/Bodde as my Defensive Midfielder and Allen/Gylfi as my advanced playmakers, Allen on Support, Gylfi on Attack.

At home I'm having about 60% possession against the weak sides but about 50-52% against Man U/City etc so doing well. However, when away from home, i'm having about 38% against the big sides and not a lot more against the weaker sides, whilst i'm getting results using counter attacking and Scott Sinclairs pace, in the away games i've seen Leon Britton go through a half with 0 passes attempted.

Admittedly without pics etc this is quite limited, but any ideas?

[deejay10]

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games like this happen far too often for my Swansea side

[Welshace]

sign of a lack of composed striker deejay.... 4 clear cut chances and not one goal...

[deejay10]

Yhh Graham, Dyer, and Gylfi all missed sitters, smashed the woodwork twice. Its hard to attract players, really wanna sign Juanmi but he has no interest. Graham has 14 goals this season but I'm not convinced. Passing 11, Creativity 8, Flair 9 is not gonna cut it, so I'm gonna sell at the end of the season, even though he is playing well.

[Welshace]

yeah graham is definitely one of those players that does a job but isn't quite there..

same as irl really

[DandyDon]

Yeah a decent, cool headed, composed finisher will probably make a big difference for you deejay, certainly looks like the rest of your squad tactic is doing the job

I would have recommended Alberto Paloschi as an excellent potential free signing but you're already in the second season aren't you? If he's still with AC Milan having extended his contract he might still be worth a look, good chance he might be affordable if Milan aren't playing him, and I've seen him sign for clubs around Swansea's level on a few saves. Depending who else you have in the side, might always be worth trying out Scott Sinclair upfront as a poacher till you find a real predator, he has pretty useful finishing and composure on my save.

[deejay10]

Yh on my last save I had Borini up front, and Lucas Anderson on the right. Tons on goalscoring potential, especially when Sinclair was getting 15+ every season.

However its not actually the striker so much, although Graham's lack of pace really hurts. My wide players get into the most scoring positions but Dyer's poor finishing lets me down the a lot. Gonna try and sign Yaisien if I can't get Borini, and try develop him into a deadly inside forward off the right.

[DandyDon]

Yeah Nathan Dyer could be pretty infuriating for me as well

Constantly skinning the fullback, then jinking into the box then blootering over the bar or tapping it gently into the grateful keeper's arms.

[Chicha_14]

Just achieved an unbeaten Premier League season to go along with the FA Cup and Champions League, the only defeat of the season came in the Carling Cup quarter final on penalties.

League Table

Fixtures

All this to go along with becoming the best club on the planet

[pedromanuelpinto]

Hello,

After my first season, that I finished in 4th where i go to the champion league qualifier, i need to get some stars.

My board set 20M € of budget.

I need a good keeper (that can play with the defense), 1 CD and 1 Right Winger.

[deejay10]

Sign Caulker for CD, Vadillo for RW ?

[ramie]

Ben Arfa or Dos Santos for RW

inigo martinez or jordi amat for CD

Save some money and maybe try a loan move for one or two Barca youths ie Bartra, Fontas or Deulofeu

[Welshace]

Hello,

After my first season, that I finished in 4th where i go to the champion league qualifier, i need to get some stars.

My board set 20M € of budget.

I need a good keeper (that can play with the defense), 1 CD and 1 Right Winger.

gk:

Ron-Robert Zieler

mandanda

begovic

rui patricio

CB:

kurt zouma

nkoulou

astori

alderweireld

breno

ecuele manga

dede

RW:

willian

james forrest

gaston ramirez

arda turan

lucas moura

eduardo salvio

lenny nangis

perotti

adam johnson

ricardo queresma

matt jarvis

[DandyDon]

2016/17 Season - Nearly Epic...

My 6th season on this save turned out to be the best so far, though it didn't quite fulfil the epic promise it had at one point it was still damn close. Despite losing club talisman Gylfi for large patches as he had an injury plagued campaign we finished with our highest points and goals tally in the league while fighting our way to the finals of both domestic cups and the Champions League. We played some of our most attacking football so far, recording some big wins along the way with several established players showing some of their best form and 3 of my best regen youngsters having real breakthrough seasons.

The Results

August to January

January to May

We recovered from a pasting in the Community Shield and an early league drubbing both at the hands of Man City to go on a fantastic run of form in the first half of the season, largely due to the incredible form of Abel Hernandez which put us in a fairly commanding position in the league and got us through our Champs league group pretty easily.

Not surprisingly Hernandez couldn't quite keep the same scoring rate up for the whole season and we lost a few more games in the second half of the campaign than the first. However we were still getting plenty of goals from other players and were managing to turn enough of the close games into wins rather than draws to keep our lead over Man City intact. We won the first silverware of the season with a 2-1 win over Everton in the League Cup final that should have been more convincing than it was.

A comprehensive victory over Chelsea in the home leg of our Champs League quarter final saw us safely though there and home form was again the key against Lyon in the semi-final. Still not quite sure what happened in the FA Cup semi-final where we were 5-1 up against Leicester at one point, only to concede 3 goals in the last 10 minutes and almost conceding an equaliser in injury time but for the offside flag and three saves by ter Stegen.

We weren't able to complete a fairytale Quadruple though, losing both the FA Cup and the Champs League finals. We lost to Chelsea after Pepe was sent off early in the second half for a second yellow, they'd raced off to an early 2-0 lead, but we'd gradually got back into the game scoring just before half time and then dominating after the break. Unfortunately after the sending off we gave away a penalty trying to clear the freekick Pepe had conceded getting his second yellow and that gave Chelsea the cushion they needed against 10 men and after that they were able to pick us off at the death to grab a 4th.

The Champs League final against Porto was just one of those games, we dominated possession, created a host of chances but they hit us on the counter attack and their keeper won man of the match....not a lot else we could have done.

Final League Table

The Squad

We've moved up into the top 10 ranked European sides and having made it to 2 finals the main aim for next season will be to try and go one step further if we can. I've already identified a couple of definite transfer targets for the summer to try and strengthen the squad, a couple of Eastern European regens I scouted a few seasons ago, but they failed work permits. Both are now established international players, so if I can agree fees for them they should now qualify for their permits and both look to have developed nicely at their clubs. I've also targetted the Belgian defender Toby Alderweireld to replace the retiring Pepe, he's been transfer listed by Arsenal and we can hopefully get him for £4-5million.

Apart from Pepe retiring there may be one or two other players leaving during the summer. Joe Allen has announced that he feels he's achieved everything he can with Swansea and requested a transfer, Scott Sinclair wasn't entirely happy with the number of games he played so might join Joe in asking for a transfer. I also have to keep an eye on Gylfi as my coaching staff stated that he's showing signs of declining as a player, which I'm assuming is down to his picking up two serious muscle injuries in the same season. He missed 4 months of the season with a serious groin injury, but came back well, scoring on his return. Unfortunately he then missed a couple of weeks with a bruised rib, before another serious muscle injury meant he missed out on the Champs League final and will miss most of pre-season too.

With Isco and Jack Wilshere in the squad it wouldn't be a devastating loss if Gylfi is declining due to injury, but I'd love to see him break the 100 goal mark for the club (he currently has 83 from 205 appearances) and hopefully become a club legend. He's on the icons list at the moment and surely can't be too far from moving up that last step.

[Neokutai]

I've decided to start a Swansea save, i'm using a tactic i have been developing over the last 6 seasons.

Pre-season has gone pretty well for me so far, i'm really happy with how the tactic is bedding in, due to a mis-click my game loaded up with the first transfer window disabled. My test will be without signing any players until the January transfer window. The first 8 games of the premier League look like a baptism of fire for my squad.

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In keeping with the Swansea way of playing there was one result that impressed me the most and that was the 2-0 win over Newells. The number of passes achieved was beyond my expectation, Allen ended up with 158 passes and Britton ended with 104.

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I'm using a 4-2-3-1 tactic with Allen and Britton as MC.

I'll continue to update as i go along.

[DandyDon]

Season Update - Two for one

Spent last week really cracking on with my Swansea save, so I've finished off two seasons which I'll update quickly with this post. Due to have a new stadium at the end of my current season, but progress will be a lot slower now that I'm also playing Guild Wars 2

2017/18 Season

This almost ended up being a very poor season by the standards we'd set in the previous couple of years, except for some absolute daylight robebry by us on the last day of the league. We lost the League Cup final to Norwich, got knocked out of the FA Cup by League 1 Preston at the first hurdle and limped out of the 1st Knockout round of the Champions League with a very poor display at home against Bayern Munich (losing that leg 1-0, we gained a very undeserved 1-1 draw away in Munich).

Despite our patchy form in the league we stayed within touching distnce of the 2 Manchester clubs throughout the season, all 3 of us were drawing too many games to really put a stamp on things. Going in to the last day we were third on goal difference from Man Utd in second, and two points behind leaders Man City. However due to the AI letting the squad size dwindle they were struggling to cope with injuries and fixture congestion as they also made the finals of the FA Cup and Champions League. Half their team of City's team for the last game included reserves and youth players with the likes of Ronaldo, Tevez and Joe Hart recovering from knocks. I had a feeling they'd struggle, a couple of matches earlier their full team had hammered us 5-1 to go top of the league, but after that injuries started to pile up and they'd struggled to draw 0-0 with Blackpool and so I was not too surprised to see Stoke take the lead against them in the score updates.

I wasn't so confident that Man Utd would struggle, at least they were away but it was away to Charlton who were well and truely relegated by that point having only amassed 9 points. However even there our luck was in as Wayne Rooney got himself red carded in the 1st half and Charlton grabbed the lead just before half time.

While all that was happening we got off to a perfect start away at West Brom with Gylfi back in the side after another injury plagued season stepping up and hammering home a 1st minute free kick. With that boost in confidence we stepped up our game and run out easy winners by the end, grabbing a 6-0 win and when Man Utd conceded a second goal right at the death it was obvious they weren't going to make a fairytale comeback and spoil our party.

Abel Hernandez was our star performer, finishing with 36 goals in all competitions...though he had to put up with the Mexican Hernandez at Man Utd finishing the league top scorer with 35 league goals to Abel's 32. The other top performers were Jack Wilshere who was now the regular starter at AMC due to Gylfi's injury problems and our right winger Toni Ljubicic who finished as our second highest scorer with 16 goals and an impressive 18 assists.

2017/18 Final League Table

As you can see none of the clubs in the top three were all that consistent with a lot of draws between us and the 2 Manchester clubs were generally more impressive in defence and in front of goal, so all in all a very lucky league title, but I'm certainly not complaining. City's injury crisis meant they also missed out on the FA Cup, their weakened squad losing to Liverpool in the final, they did manage to salvage something though as they went on to beat Lyon 2-1 thanks to a recovered Cristiano Ronaldo.

2018/19 Season

After the tight finish to the season just gone the 2018 summer transfer window proved to be a challenge as well, mostly in terms of trying to keep my squad intact. For the second summer running Joe Allen declared he wanted a new challenge and I had bids in for several of main names in the team. I decided, reluctantly, to transfer list Allen at his request to move on to pastures new. He's been a reliable mainstay for my team, but I didn't want to keep him an unhappy player, he was also about to start the final year of his contract and I fgured that if he was determined to leave he wouldn't sign a new deal. In the end I accepted a few bids for him and he ended up signing with Chelsea for £10.75 million. (I had hoped he'd accept a deal from Atletico Madrid even though they'd offered a million less for the fee, but he plumped for the London team). Sami Khedira also moved on, heading back to Germany after refusing our new contract in January, he headed off to Dortmund on a free when his deal expired.

I rejected some fairly substantial bids from Real Madrid, Man City, Spurs and others for the likes of Wilshere, Papadopoulos and Ciaran Clark (Man Utd seem to be especially interested in him) and then Barcelona came in with a rather mind boggling offer of £44 million for Maxim Kerimov, a Ukrainian left back we signed from Shakhtar a year vefore. £44 million! I was seriously tempted by that deal, don't think I've had an upfront offer anything like that so far on FM12, but in the end I decided I'd rather hold on to him....though I did tell Barca that if they wanted to offer £80 million they could have him, unsurprisingly they didn't didn't increase their bid. They did, though, come back in January with a £23 million offer for Stepan Vasilijev, a Russian midfielder I'd signed at the same time as Kerimov. This one I chose to accept as I did have a few options in central midfield anyway and the £23 million more than covered my summer spending on various youngsters I brought in as back up.

After their late failure in the league last year Man City had been very active in the transfer window adding Carlo Ancelotti as manager and signing Mesut oezil, Toni Kroos and Gonzalo Higuain to strengthen their 1st team squad as well as a whole load of youth talent. Man Utd also splashed £73 million, mostly on regen talent, but they did add Lars Bender to their midfield.

Despite the big spending of both those teams though this was destined to be Swansea's year , my team had the kind of form across the board that I'm unlikely to see in a while. We came very close to a clean sweep in all competitions, only the League Cup escaped us as we lost narrowly 1-0 to Man Utd in the 4th round (after already beating Man City in the 3rd round). We were a little wobbly in the group stages of the Champions League where we finished second in our group behind a very impressive PSG, but after we lost only our second league game 2-1 to West Brom on New Years Day we picked our form up even higher and didn't lose another game in any competition.

Our defence was tighter than it's ever been, conceding 24 goals in the league which was our lowest total by a fair way and in attack we were pretty unstoppable bagging 117 league goals. The most impressive thing from my point of view was how the goals were shared about and by the end of the season, 5 players had scored 20 goals or more. Lennert de Bondt was our top scorer with 33 goals from 44 appearances, just ahead of Abel Hernandez who finished on 30 from 40 games. Behind the 2 strikers though, 3 of our midfield also bagged 20 goals or more. Right midfielder Ljubicic grabbed himself 22 goals and a massive 35 assists in 52 games while Jack Wilshere had his best season also scoring 22 goals from 50. Juan Sultan was just behind them with 21 goals and the left midfielder also chipped in with 22 assists, he probably would have scored more but got a slight ankle knock that disrupted a run of goalscoring form.

Not content with breaking Gylfi's record for assists during a season, Ljubicic also beat his man of the Match record and his average rating record as he racked up 16 Motm awards and 7.91 average rating. Somehow he was beaten to Players player of the Year by Cristiano Ronaldo, but he did win Footballer of the Year.

20189/19 Final League Table

The Squad

I was pretty amazed by the form we showed and kept expecting us to crash and burn toward the end, guess I should have had a little more faith in the players. Don't think I'll be so lucky to have so many players in that kind of form at the same time for a while. I'm expecting some pretty hefty bidding for some of my squad during the summer but with the board handing me £65 million transfer budget for next year and a new, expanded stadium on the way we should be able to keep competing at the top of the league.

Right, sorry for waffling on and I'll try and make the next season update a bit more concise.

[Chicha_14]

Doing well Dandy well done. I've played 20 seasons on my Swansea and don't think I'll play any more but you never know. After taking over Fergie in hall of fame and totally dominating all competitions I've lost that buzz for it, will keep an eye on the thread though see how other people are getting on with their Swansea saves.

[DandyDon]

Doing well Dandy well done. I've played 20 seasons on my Swansea and don't think I'll play any more but you never know. After taking over Fergie in hall of fame and totally dominating all competitions I've lost that buzz for it, will keep an eye on the thread though see how other people are getting on with their Swansea saves.

Fair enough, quite a record toppling Fergie in the hall of fame

Don't think I've made it 20 seasons into a save since the Champ Man days...mostly as it takes me so long to play through a season these days.

[DandyDon]

Disappointingly after the board announcing a couple seasons ago that we were building a new stadium and it was due for completion in May 2020, no new stadium has been forthcoming when we reached that date. In fact all mention of a new stdium has disappeared, the only option in the boardroom interaction is to request that we buy the Liberty.

[Bradz FM]

Just started a game with Swansea. Any good strikers to sign that will score goals and make a difference? About £4M to spend

[chrisormie]

Love to see interest in Swansea been a season ticket holder since the new stadium was built and been watching the Swans since the mid-nineties. Ahh I love this club and have had some cracking games with them on FM but I'm hoping for an attribute hike in FM13 for a few players as some still look a little low to me.

I did my own db update halfway through the window and have finished 6th, 3rd and currently holding Man Utd off in first by goal difference at the halfway point in 2014. Pablo Hernandez has won player of the year in both seasons, though I'd have given the awards to Coutinho (released by Inter) or Gago (transfer listed by Real Madrid) who had outstanding seasons. Hoping to win the Premiership this season with Vorm, Williams, Bartley, and Dyer still in my starting XI.

Good luck with your games, and after our years in the bilges of the Football League, long continue the rise of the Swans!

[chrisormie]

Disappointingly after the board announcing a couple seasons ago that we were building a new stadium and it was due for completion in May 2020, no new stadium has been forthcoming when we reached that date. In fact all mention of a new stdium has disappeared, the only option in the boardroom interaction is to request that we buy the Liberty.

Similar happened with my Koln game but a board takeover had interrupted it witout me knowing. Two years later I had the option to build a new stadium again and it went through quickly that time. Hope for good news for you!