Create-a-Club Challenge for FM18

[GreyedOutMan]

So I've been looking around for my save for this year and I've (almost) made my mind up, and I think it will lead to a whole new challenge which others might be interested in attempting when FM18 hits. I have been exploring the idea of creating a whole history for a brand new club and it's something I want to do properly this year.

It is similar to Dafuge's challenge and the others it has spawned, but with one obvious difference: the team is new!

Challenge Rules:

• You must create a club in the lowest playable division of a European league which gets just one Champions' League place (list below for FM17, obviously will change slightly but might give you an idea of where you fancy going). If you want to add more leagues to it or indeed add a league that is not in the game to start with, go ahead, but the highest league you can choose in any country is the lowest one playable "out of the box", and the league must be on the list below.
• Your manager must have no coaching badges at the start and only Sunday League playing experience. Beyond that, your choice of focus for attributes is your own.
• No use of editors

Challenge Aims (in approximate order of achievement)

• Win the title in your own country
• Qualify for the Group Stages of the Champions' League
• Win the Champions' League
• Secure the max CL qualification places
• Take the national  team to a World Cup
• Win the World Cup with the national side
• Repeat the previous aim, but with players only from your youth academy

If anyone wants to try to do this without signing players, be my guest, but I won't be doing this: I think the only realistic way to manage it is to ensure that you get youngsters from other nations in and naturalise them. I envisage a lot of relatively obscure Brazilians in the national side eventually!

Finally, if anyone knows of any of the leagues here which make this challenge either much harder or impossible (I'm thinking quotas on non-EU players, perhaps, or really complex promotion rules), please let us know and I'll add to the OP. This is a work in progress so will be edited a fair bit, I imagine.

Countries Eligible IN FM17 (in order of rank - thus probably difficulty!)

16. Austria
17. Croatia
18. Poland
19. Cyprus
20. Belarus
21. Sweden
22. Norway
23. Israel
24. Denmark
25. Scotland
26. Azerbaijan
27. Serbia
28. Kazakhstan
29. Bulgaria
30. Slovenia
31. Slovakia
32. Liechtenstein
33. Hungary
34. Moldova
 

[GreyedOutMan]

Posting Guidelines

I'm not going to create many more "rules" because it's up to you how you post but I would suggest doing the following in each post:

1. Basic season update.
2. Useful screenshots (league table, squad overview with stats, history pages etc).
3. A list of records broken (this will happen a lot, and is part of the fun of this save).
4. A list of key players with profiles and info.
5. The same with any youth prospects.
6. A nation update with info on any progress in coefficients, national team etc.

I'm sure this will be added to when I or anyone else have any ideas.

[GreyedOutMan]

For what it's worth I think I'm leaning towards Scotland simply because I want to be able to pronounce my regens' names!!!

[SoSolidSnake]

2 hours ago, GreyedOutMan said:

For what it's worth I think I'm leaning towards Scotland simply because I want to be able to pronounce my regens' names!!!

That's exactly what I was just thinking! I'm not sure I'm going to have time to take part over the year due to studies, but it's definitely an interesting idea, and I might give it a shot. 

[GreyedOutMan]

8 minutes ago, SoSolidSnake said:

That's exactly what I was just thinking! I'm not sure I'm going to have time to take part over the year due to studies, but it's definitely an interesting idea, and I might give it a shot. 

Even if you don't have time to update too often, be good to have you on board!

[SoSolidSnake]

How were you visualising the club creation? Using the create-a-club mode in FM, or creating our own club through the editor? 

[GreyedOutMan]

Create a club mode. Does everything you need it to.

[SoSolidSnake]

Any restrictions on clubs you can choose as the base, or players you can add or anything like that? Because I feel it could be very easy to just game the system.

[GreyedOutMan]

19 hours ago, SoSolidSnake said:

Any restrictions on clubs you can choose as the base, or players you can add or anything like that? Because I feel it could be very easy to just game the system.

I was thinking about that. But I think not - I don't mind there being a range of difficulties. As long as you start in the lowest playable league, it's fine.

[SoSolidSnake]

Fair enough! The only reason I asked was I was looking at how it would be for FM17, so I looked at the Croatian league. In the second tier (also lowest tier) the teams all have value of between 500k-950k, apart from Dinamo Zagreb II who have a value of 37.5 million. Now, obviously if you choose them, and terminate the link to Dinamo Zagreb when creating your new club, you have a ridiculous advantage over the players you're able to choose to fill your team compared to the other teams in your league. But of course, as you said, it's up to the player to choose their own difficulty. 

[GreyedOutMan]

2 minutes ago, SoSolidSnake said:

Fair enough! The only reason I asked was I was looking at how it would be for FM17, so I looked at the Croatian league. In the second tier (also lowest tier) the teams all have value of between 500k-950k, apart from Dinamo Zagreb II who have a value of 37.5 million. Now, obviously if you choose them, and terminate the link to Dinamo Zagreb when creating your new club, you have a ridiculous advantage over the players you're able to choose to fill your team compared to the other teams in your league. But of course, as you said, it's up to the player to choose their own difficulty. 

Indeed but I don't think it's possible to take over a second team - that's just Dinamo Zagreb's reserves...

If I'm wrong, then it wouldn't be against the rules but it would probably be against the spirit of the challenge!

[GreyedOutMan]

Any suggestions for the challenge beyond this? I'm open to it - I said before that I'm happy to edit the OP...

[SoSolidSnake]

17 minutes ago, GreyedOutMan said:

Indeed but I don't think it's possible to take over a second team - that's just Dinamo Zagreb's reserves...

If I'm wrong, then it wouldn't be against the rules but it would probably be against the spirit of the challenge!

I didn't actually try it, so you might be right, it did seem like you were able to choose it though. That's fair enough! As of yet, no suggestions, maybe I'll think of some later! 

[GreyedOutMan]

Slight changes to this list:

Countries Eligible IN FM18 (in order of rank - thus probably difficulty!)

16. Croatia
17. Romania
18. Denmark
19. Belarus
20. Poland
21. Sweden
22. Israel
23. Scotland
24. Cyprus
25. Norway
26. Azerbaijan
27. Bulgaria
28. Serbia
29. Kazakhstan
30. Slovenia
31. Slovakia
32. Liechtenstein
33. Hungary
34. Moldova
35. Iceland
36. Finland
37. Albania
38. ROI
39. Bosnia & Herz
40. Georgia

I realise not all of them are playable, but any further thoughts?

[Mr_Demus]

Liechtenstein can't qualify for the CL AFAIK

[GreyedOutMan]

AFAIK they're not in the game either so that's fine! This is just the list of rankings.

[Makoto Nakamura]

3 hours ago, Mr_Demus said:

Liechtenstein can't qualify for the CL AFAIK

 

3 hours ago, GreyedOutMan said:

AFAIK they're not in the game either so that's fine! This is just the list of rankings.

Fwiw from fm 17.3 a Liechtenstein side can now qualify for the Champions League via the Europa League, would be interesting to see if you can create a Lichsteiner club based in Switzerland.

[WilsonJuve]

On 21/10/2017 at 11:56, GreyedOutMan said:

For what it's worth I think I'm leaning towards Scotland simply because I want to be able to pronounce my regens' names!!!

3rd team in glasgow? Tempting to try and Eventually Trump both Celtic and Rangers.....

[GreyedOutMan]

13 minutes ago, WilsonJuve said:

3rd team in glasgow? Tempting to try and Eventually Trump both Celtic and Rangers.....

Problem is they then get the best regens and that's a big deal to me. Whatever league I go in, I want to find a city that is fairly big and doesn't have any major teams. I think in Scotland, Paisley or East Kilbride are the best options. If I was doing it in England, I think I'd go for either Bristol or perhaps Leeds. Bristol because they've never really had a really big side, and Leeds because it's the 3rd biggest city, and yet has only one major club.

[GreyedOutMan]

Sorry, 4th now. Manchester has overtaken it. It was Leeds before.

[SoSolidSnake]

Would it be a problem for me to start this on FM17 instead? I haven't got 18 yet, and I'm not sure I'm going to, but this challenge definitely interests me. 

[GreyedOutMan]

On 11/3/2017 at 15:33, SoSolidSnake said:

Would it be a problem for me to start this on FM17 instead? I haven't got 18 yet, and I'm not sure I'm going to, but this challenge definitely interests me. 

No, that's fine. I'd be interested to read about your exploits anyway. Go for it!

[SoSolidSnake]

To make things a bit easier for myself - in terms of transfers and lower EU player requirements - I've chosen Croatia as the basis for my new team: Kruto Zagreb

Kruto meaning solid in Croatian, and Zagreb being the capital of Croatia where we are based. I know the badge is very lacklustre, but I'm not any sort of expert on designing logos, so I just went with one of the preset badges in FM.

Now, unfortunately, we are very in the red:                               

and our wage/transfer budget isn't looking to hot either        

And this is without any staff, only players, so we'll see how that goes. I could be in trouble straight away! We are predicted to finish second though, so that's a bonus. Hopefully we can live up to the expectations! 

Once I've signed some staff, I'll play a few games, and then show the team that we'll be starting with.

Let me know if you want to see anything else!

[GreyedOutMan]

18 minutes ago, SoSolidSnake said:

To make things a bit easier for myself - in terms of transfers and lower EU player requirements - I've chosen Croatia as the basis for my new team: Kruto Zagreb

 

This is a terrific start. Thanks for kicking us off in such style. I'm trying to find someone to design me a club badge as I really want to create a proper identity for myself. But I have to say the biggest takeaway from your OP was the name. I really like the idea of using a word from the language and a place name. Problem is I'm leaning towards Scotland. Wonder if there's an obscure Scots Gaelic word for "winners" or something?

[SoSolidSnake]

22 minutes ago, GreyedOutMan said:

Wonder if there's an obscure Scots Gaelic word for "winners" or something?

Haha! Google translate is your friend! Although with Scotland, I think English is an acceptable language to use.

Kruto Zagreb Update

So we played some friendlies: 

and we did pretty well! Hajduk are in the Croatian first division, and have finished 3rd the last 3 years, so that's an incredible win, and Ferencvaros are the current champions of the Hungarian first division, so again that win is no small feat! Of course these are friendlies, and therefore to be taken with a pinch of salt, but it's still promising! 

Now this is the 'dream squad' I managed to put together with the squad budget I had:

As you can see, Carlos Soler is the outstanding Key player, which we should have never been able to afford, and if I'm honest I think someone is likely to want him for a transfer sometime soon.

Other important players include: 

Main forward Leandro Antunes

Wide men Wenderson Galeno

and Edin Sehic

And finally, our best defender (who is currently out for 2 to 3 months with a dislocated shoulder thanks to that last friendly)
Matej Jonjic

And as the final part of this update, this is how we line up:

 

Of course Jonjic would be in if he wasn't inured.

Again, for any more info, just ask!

[GreyedOutMan]

Awesome start - keep it coming!

[SoSolidSnake]

Just a quick screenshot this time because I thought it was funny: 

Due to our non-existent league record last season, we get home advantage in our first cup tie, I guess that's just one of the benefits of being a new club!

And I'll leave off by saying that things have started off fairly well, but there's still a long way to go. I'll have another update either around Christmas, or if I'm getting through games quickly I may even wait til the end of the season. 

[GreyedOutMan]

Need some help with my graphics. As you can see, my logo is created and I've made kits and saved them with the correct ID and format I believe (though this is a test game, I won't start till the main game is out). However, the kits aren't showing up despite being named as shown. Any idea why?

[SoSolidSnake]

I don't really know anything about all that, but maybe if you look here they'll be able to help? The kits and badge look nice though!

[Muttley84]

You need to also have a config file in the folder linking them to your club id for the kits to work.

[GreyedOutMan]

25 minutes ago, Muttley84 said:

You need to also have a config file in the folder linking them to your club id for the kits to work.

How do I create this?

[SoSolidSnake]

Another Small Update on Kruto Zagreb

The struggles of doing well in a lower league club....

We're going to have to say goodbye to our top scorer unfortunately, hopefully we can get a bit of cash for him! 

The other quick thing is we had a takeover by a consortium, and they took out a bank loan for us, so we have positive cashflow for once!

 I'm taking advantage of this while I can.

We're currently on winter break, and I'll be back with a big update when we get our youth intake through, which I believe is sometime in February  

 

[SoSolidSnake]

The First Big Update

It's currently 22nd February - Youth Intake Day - and it's been a good season so far! We're top of the table by 11 points with 14 games to go, so that's something to celebrate at the very least! We've also managed to stay afloat and keep our positive bank balance for the time being, although only because of a couple of sales during the transfer window. This has allowed to pick up a couple of new players as well though, and also stopped our wages being about £20,000 over budget. The new board also allowed us to look for a senior affiliate, which we found in First Division team Rijeka, as well a couple of quality of life requests such as increasing the number of coaches so we can actually have a dedicated fitness coach. And now for the screenshots:

        Competitions                          Results: 1|2

                    

As you can see, well ahead in the league, but the cup didn't go so well... We we're knocked out by 4th place, well you can read it. They've actually made it to the semi final of the Kup, and play the real Dinamo Zagreb next week. In the league we play every team 3 times, so there are 33 games in total, and at this point we've almost played every team twice. If we didn't at least reach the promotion playoff (2nd place) I'd be disappointed. 

Transfers

IN                                                                                                                                       

   OUT

So, as I expected Carlos Soler was off to the much larger club of Atletico Madrid, but for £3M, I can't really complain! Leandro is a bit of a sore point: I had managed to negotiate a deal for £1.8M with both West Brom and Anderlecht, but then because we were so cash strapped, when Bournemouth bid £800k the board accepted it without asking, and of course that's who he chose to sign with, rejecting the other two. So I missed out on a million, but that's life I suppose! Our new affiliate allowed us to loan an AML that we desperately needed seeing as all our wingers seem to favour the right wing so much more, not to mention our best player on the left wing has been injured for 7 months - which is almost finished now - so we've been a bit wanting in that area. So our new inside forward goes by the name of Goodness Ajayi (profile in link).

Our second signing was Portuguese defensive midfielder Bruno Alves to replace Carlos Soler. And he was a cheap buy for what seems like a decent player.

Next up is our replacement for Leandro, and this boy is actually a Croatian, so this transfer actually feels realistic for a second tier Croatian club - if you excuse the £475k fee - and he actually looks rather good, especially at the young age of 18. This is Antonio Lukanovic.

And our final signing of the season a young Colombian who somehow popped up on one of those agent offers, another striker to strengthen the depth - and also a cheap addition to the squad: target man Brayan Riascos.

Youth Intake

 

This years youth intake seems to be a good one on first glance, of course you never truly know how it will turn out until they develop, but the most exciting prospects are:

Marijan Brekalo - this quick attacking midfielder could one day be the spearhead of my midfield, the number 10 to supply the striker. And in fact, he is a good fit as I only have 2 AMCs, one in his prime at 29 who won't be around for much longer, and another at 21 who I'm sure will have competition from Brekalo very soon... His biggest problem is his casual personality, but I'm sure a bit of tutoring can help with that. 

Ivan Hajduk - This young full-back isn't much to look at just yet, but he has a few standout attributes, and 5 star potential, so who knows where he could go.

Davor Krznar - Another AMC who's not quite as impressive as the first, but he is a rare - in this squad at least - left footer. I'm not sure that helps his chances on being ahead of Brekalo in the pecking order though. Another one with potential though.

The only other player of any note would be Benjamin Rudan, but only due to his potential, which has to be taken with a pinch of salt, because none of my staff really have good ratings in JPA, or JCA for that matter. 

Squad Overview and Key Players

First off, basic player stat overview, as shown on the home page:

What this doesn't show you, is the 10 goals scored by Leandro Antunes before he left the club (taken from the competition stat page, in which he is leading goalscorer) but that's neither here nor there. As you can see Krstic, my shadow striker, is my (second) top goalscorer, and he's been performing very well in that area, topping goals, assists and highest rating. Strangely enough, the man with the most POTM awards is my right back Mihael Rebernik, but I have often felt FM is biased towards full backs. Matej Jonjic, as well as being a fantastic defender, is also kind of aggressive, and has managed to get himself sent off twice, despite missing the first 2 months of the season, so I'd say that was impressive if it hadn't cost me games.

And now for some more detailed players stats, ordered by appearances - this is only players who have made at least one appearance.

As you can see, only our goalkeeper has started every single game, and Krstic has played every game, but started on the bench once. Marko Ristovski is an interesting player. He wasn't in my starting team, but then he started complaining about his playing time, so I said 'sure, I'll play you more over the next few months'. So, I stopped playing Duarte, and started playing Ristovski, and he ended up scoring twice, getting an assist and 2 POTM in 9 starts, which is a good return for a defensive midfielder, in fact his average rating of 7.19 is the highest in the squad - so I'm not sure why it doesn't say that on the overview; must be because he's played fewer games.

Anyhow, to rush things along, Key Player Profiles:

Milos Krstic - The shadow striker of dreams

Mihael Rebernik - Our incredible right back

Edin Sehic - Our right winger, who I don't think has changed much since the first post

and finally Marko Ristovski - Our newly found midfielder who can hopefully keep performing, and fighting off competition.

I hope the new signings become key players as well, but they are as of yet untested against league opposition.

Club Records

Only a quick overview into our records, as the first season isn't even over yet, and of course all records are new as of this season.

And here is a manager overview for those that are interested. The new board allowed me to finally start taking my first coaching badge.

Croatia

At this point in the save, not much is going to have happened, and pretty much none of it will be due to me, but here's the world ranking of the national team, and the ranking of the league:

                                         

                Sitting comfortable in 15th for the nation                                          but 17th for the top league, could have some thing to do with Dinamo winning it for                                                                                                                                           the past 10 years

Dinamo also happen to - unsurprisingly - be the team with the highest coefficient in Croatia. They're also likely to fall this year after losing in the Champions League Playoffs.

We of course, have no coefficient, being a new club in the second division and all. Hopefully I can change that in the coming years, but lets not get ahead of ourselves. We've still got to finish this season yet.

[Sankalan]

would like to give a go on FM17. Lets see when

[SoSolidSnake]

End of Season 1

Okay, this time I'm going to try and make it a bit shorter because that last post is a bit of a behemoth. The easiest way to make it shorter is going to be using links rather than posting the pictures , so I'll give that a go. If you prefer the pictures and don't mind the updates looking huge, let me know and I'll keep it as it was with the pretty pictures! Anyway, on to the update:

We won! We finished 1st in the league, which is a fantastic achievement, especially seeing as we did it by 17 points. In fact funnily enough 2-5th place all had 50 points! Obviously our additions to the squad just made us a much better team than the competition, but I think we're going to have to step it up a gear to be competitive next year in the first division. We didn't have the greatest start after the winter break, winning only 3 of the first 8, but we got back on track and went on a 6 game unbeaten run to finish champions. The board are currently happen with my leadership of the team and I've tied down another year long contract, and we're still £1.8m to the good in terms of finances (although we do have a loan of £2m to pay over the next 10 years - should be manageable). We've certainly had some players who've really shone, and some room to improve, so I'll be looking at the transfer market over the months leading up to the season to see what we can find, and hope that I don't lose anyone too necessary. The great thing about the move up to the first division is we no longer have the rule that we need 3 u21 players in the first 11, which made me choose non-optimal teams at time. That's enough with the summary, let's get into the details.

Competitions 

League Table - Results

League Top Scorers - as you can see, despite Leandro leaving in January, he still made it to 5th in the top goalscorers! One behind him on 9 was Krstic, my fantastic Shadow striker, and then my replacement striker (well in fact my second replacement striker, but I'll get back to that) Brayan Riascos on 8 - and the best goals per minute too. So we did fairly well in the goals department.

Most POTM - Wouldn't normally post this, but seeing as two of our players were joint top, I thought it was worth a mention! Especially with Riascos only playing 9 full games.

Now this season, we had a ridiculous problem with injuries. Just look at that table. We had 8 players miss at least 10% of the season, and our main goalkeeper missed 9%! And you see Antonio Lukanovic missed 25% of the season? He was the replacement I bought for Leandro, and he pretty much got injured straight away for 7 weeks! 25% of the season is massive considering he only arrived in January. Nevertheless, Riasco proved his worth in the team, and so now Lukanovic is going to have to fight for his place back. According to my coach reports, he's not even injury prone either! But we won the league, so I suppose I can't complain too much, I'm going to have to try and do something to fix that next year though, we can't afford to have our best players out for so long - I'm looking at you Galeno.

Squad Overview and Key Players

Main Player Stats - Detailed Stats 1|2          (Ordered by appearances)

Now Krstic may not have got the highest average rating - in fact it's not looking that great at 6.99 - but I'd say he's one of our most influential players. With 9 goals, 6 assists and 27 Key Passes, that makes for a great attacking threat. Of course he also had the most appearances, only missing 2 league games.

Riascos was also key to our success in the second half of the season, scoring some very important goals in his 10 games. This is apparent in his average rating of 7.54 - the highest in the squad. After his first couple of games, where we kept losing, I thought he was going to be a flop, but eventually he must have changed shoes because he was banging them in like you wouldn't believe! Very happy with that 8k transfer fee. 

After Riascos, our next 2 highest avg. ratings are our goalkeeper and backup goalkeeper - Condric and Gasparic - which I guess says something about our defence, although I'm not sure what... Could be they were so bad that our keepers always had to get us out of trouble - they did make 155 saves between them. 

Now it may look like Pajovic is this great goalscoring defender, but the strange truth is - he's our best penalty taker, so those 4 goals are less impressive, given he took 5 penalties.

And here are the team stats from the team report page - 1|2

Youth Players

In terms of non-starting youth, not a lot has happened. Of course we have young players that are already first team starters, but I'm not counting them, this is only players that are in the u19 squad. Now they've all improved a little, but no one stands out as having improved a lot.

Marijan Brekalo is still our best prospect, but he's refused every tutor I've tried to give him, so annoyingly he still has a casual personality and only 8 determination. Hopefully we can rectify that in the near future.

Club Overview and Records

We actually have something in our trophy cabinet now! And here's an overview of our records, of course every record was set this season, so there's no sense me going into all of it and which ones have been broken. One I think is particularly impressive, is we never went more than 1 game in a row without scoring.

And of course, what end of season update would be complete with the End of Season Awards! And we have these gems as well! (two links there)

Finally, the National Report:

Croatia are down to 21st now unfortunately, and the MaxTV Prv League hasn't changed ranking for 17th, I'm not sure when they update or whether it just actually hasn't changed at all.

And that's it for the season! I'll be back to let you know how the next one goes! If you want to know anything else, or think I've missed something, or simply don't like having all these links and want the pictures back, let me know!

[GreyedOutMan]

Great stuff! I might copy that format! But I've now started so I'll introduce my new club...

[GreyedOutMan]

So my club exists (although I can't get the kits working, which is odd because I did manage to get it working as Clyde - if anyone knows what I need to do please let me know).

I've played through pre-season and won my first league game.

Paisley Splang is the team name. Based just outside of Glasgow.
My squad looks pretty strong. It's more or less the Clyde squad with a few changes, and a few people taken out to make room for Henry Lane: I wanted one player with heaps of potential. Don't think I will be able to keep hold of him for ever, but for now he looks good.

Finances don't look too hot, especially the wage budget which is clearly going to need some attention. 

My tactic is fairly basic for now. No need to complicate things when I don't really know my players.

[GreyedOutMan]

Right - so a very good start, but things have gone haywire since and I think I need some help!

Results have been shocking and I've been far too reliant on Lane. Nobody else is averaging 7.00 now.

I've fiddled around with all sorts of tactics, playing 4-4-2 at first, but switched it to 4-5-1 recently to give us more stability in midfield. I think part of it is the poor defence, and there's little I can do about this since we are in a terrible mess financially, but any tips?

[SoSolidSnake]

Nice to see you're up and running! I've been busy the last few days so haven't got anywhere new on my save.

That is rough start :/ I haven't played FM18 so I don't know if my tips are any help, but whenever I struggle defensively I always find a DM helps me immensely. As you can see from my posts, I have two in my team! In that 4-5-1 you don't seem to really have a defensive player who holds his position and therefore is sort a defensive rock. From what I understand, the BWM(s) will move around too much trying to close down everything and leave space to be exploited, the AP(s) obviously doesn't do much defensively, and then the CAR(s) I don't really know, but is that sort of a BBM? In which case, again it's not someone to hold the midfield fort.

In the 442 you do have a defensive pairing though, so perhaps it is also partly due to the defence. Although in the 442 I'm not really sure how your strikers are being supplied, it seems to be kind of negative seeing as you're on a standard mentality but have 5 players on defensive, and only 1 on attack in the whole squad. 

I'm no tactical genius, but I've read a few of the guides in the tactics forum so I like to think I've picked something up! The main thing I read about making a tactic is that you've got to think about what you want to do with it i.e. where do you want to the goals to come from, and how do you set up those situations, and how do your roles/players compliment eachother, for example in your 451 the midfield all have roles which like to roam by nature, leaving you with no shape, which isn't great in the lower leagues.

I look forward to seeing how it goes though! And don't forget about player instructions too! Try and play to your strengths!

[GreyedOutMan]

Thanks for the tip regarding the DM, will start to tweak! Keep reading and join in if you can!!

[GreyedOutMan]

How is this looking for starters? Don't want to tweak too much too soon, but I've pushed the Carrilero back into a DM who is asked to "hold position" in front of the defence to give me a solid base, and pushed the AP forward onto attack so that he can start to create more for the wingers and AF (who is the star player), with the entire team asked to "exploit the flanks" for the wingers to get the ball more and start getting their "whipped crosses" into the box for Lane to finish off. I've also taken off "close down more". Would it be worth asking the BWM to "hold position" too, to counteract the problem you suggested about him roaming around too much looking to get the ball back? Or does having the DM make this unnecessary?

I still need to improve the defence but there's not much I can do about it right now. Hoping for a youth player probably!!

[GreyedOutMan]

Right so the first game after those changes and despite being 9/1 long shots, I pulled off a really rather comfortable victory. Question: how can I analyse this game next to the previous game to spot what worked and what still needs some tweaking to keep this up?

[SoSolidSnake]

That looks more balanced to me, and if you find you're still having problems defensively, I'd change either the BWM or the DM to a defensive mentality, but not both. In regards to whether you should ask the BWM to hold position, I'd say watch a few games and see what he does. If he seems too far away and you're left open, then sure try and get him to hold position more. But if he's making a lot of tackles, and the DM is clearing up when he misses a tackle or is left out of position it's probably fine. 

It's hard to say what went well and what didn't without watching the game, but you seem to have got the majority of your shots on target (66% is good) so that's definitely a positive. How do Peterhead compare to your team? Are they supposedly much better, or worse, or around the same? I see it was 3-2 to them last time, so you've obviously done better defensively this time around!

In answer to how to analyse the games next to eachother, I don't know. If you play around with the analysis feature maybe you can find a way. 

One other tip - and this only works if the Scottish lower leagues are the same as when I played in them - you can use trialists for 2 games. You don't have to pay them anything, so if you can find free players willing to come on trial they can play for you for a couple of games. Look in the rules for the league to see if that's still true. So you can actually beef up that defence, but only for 2 games before you have to find another player to take their place.

Good luck!

[GreyedOutMan]

I think the rule is I can use two trialists, not that they can only play twice. Although of course given that trialists are only there for two weeks, that would explain the two games issue!

But thanks for that tip - might well give it a shot!

[SoSolidSnake]

14 minutes ago, GreyedOutMan said:

I think the rule is I can use two trialists, not that they can only play twice. Although of course given that trialists are only there for two weeks, that would explain the two games issue

Oh yes, that might have been it! It's been a long time since I took Annan Athletic to the Scottish Prem haha. Hopefully that can be a bit of help to you, good luck with the rest of the season! In fact, I think I might have some time to pick Kruto Zagreb back up.

[GreyedOutMan]

Hmmm. May have to start my save again - really struggling, and that was with my wonderkid 15yo striker who I spent most of my original budget on. Had him on a youth contract and suddenly Hearts came in for him and he was gone. Not at the end of the season, and I had no say in it whatsoever, getting a risible £37.5k compensation. I'm really angry, because that was most of my budget which was significantly more than that. He had 19 goals in 19 league games, and we're still 7th out of 10, albeit 13 points clear of relegation, so this is likely to be the end of my save already I fear. I will start again; I put too much energy into thinking of a name to give up on Paisley Splang now!

[GreyedOutMan]

Had a bug in the middle of a game which meant I had to restart FM, so I have Lane back - but not for long. There is nothing I can do to stop him leaving, still...anyone know why?

 

[SoSolidSnake]

3 hours ago, GreyedOutMan said:

Had a bug in the middle of a game which meant I had to restart FM, so I have Lane back - but not for long. There is nothing I can do to stop him leaving, still...anyone know why?

Why you can't stop him leaving? I'm fairly certain it's because he's on a youth contract, so he is able to accept full-time contracts from other clubs. It might be too late even if you reloaded it again, but you could try offering him a full-time contract. 

I had the same issue in a Serie C save I had a couple of years ago, a promising youth player accepted a contract from a bigger club and went for minimal compensation, and it really put a downer on the save.

I'm sorry the save hasn't worked out well! Although if you don't get relegated, you could carry on even though it would be difficult, it's up to you!

In other news, I had a quick play earlier on my Kruto Zagreb save, we've now made it through the summer transfer period and I bought a few good players including a very good DM who I hope can fill the hole Carlos Soler left, and a goalkeeper who is miles better than Condric.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do!

[Joe.]

I like the look of this, but I've not got FM18 yet (I tend to wait for the bugs to be ironed out..) 

I've already made my mind up about country/team name/kit etc. There are many a nice single malt in Scotland to use for inspiration  

[GreyedOutMan]

Yeah - he wouldn't consider a new contract because he was far too good for us. If I do have to totally start again, I'll make sure he is old enough that he won't automatically be on a youth contract - 17, right?