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dafuge

By dafuge,
in Challenges, Sign-Ups & Experiments

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The Art of Drowning

The Art of Drowning

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Season 4 - Dulwich Hamlet

I'm tempted to give this a break now, think I may have made it a bit too unrealistic by taking advantage of great players being left unattached suddenly being interested.  It's a bit of a loophole and not cheating but it almost feels like it is.  Mason Mount is just unreal, probably far too good for the Championship let alone league one.  Anyway we absolutely smashed the league, had a nice run in the cup knocking out Premier League Watford before narrowly losing to another Prem side Wolves, sadly both at home which didn't help finance.

League Table

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Transfers

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Key Players

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XaW

XaW

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@The Art of Drowning: I think there might be something with Dulwich Hamlet. I just had a player who joined them over me. I'm in the Championship, they are in Vanarama National. When I look at the reputation list I'm way above them, so I don't know why.

In other news, I just sold a youth player. A winger I don't quite rate for £140k + 50 of his next transfer to Leeds. They must know something I don't...

TIKkbOg.png

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XaW

XaW

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Swindon69 said:

Hi - how do I stick an image from FM in here?

 

Prt Scr, then paste it into paint. Then go to an image hosting site like imgur and upload it. Then post it here. :)

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Hypanimz

Hypanimz

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Image result for hereford fc

Hereford FC - Sky Bet Championship- 2025/26

Our first season in the Championship and I thought we would have enough about us to survive but I didn't think it would be easy. We started well with some victories and we were challenging for top spot. I thought this was juts early season form and that it wouldn't last. Amazingly it lasted until Christmas and then we had our first little blip with a winless run. We got it back together and kept on top of the table although the pressure began mounting towards the end of the season. The other teams were close to us but when we slipped up so did they and we had a 4 point gap to 3rd for the most part, We managed to hang on and secure promotion to the Premier League on the penultimate game and we then secured the title on the final day.   
 

League Table


Past Positions

Cups - We made the quarter final of the Carabao Cup before Man United knocked us out 2-1 at Old Trafford. Amazingly Lightning struck twice in the FA Cup and we made it to Round 5 and got drawn away to Man United again and we lost 3-1 this time. Good for the finances!

Squad - I have a lot of work ahead of me over the summer to get this squad up to scratch to compete in the Premier League. Decisions need to be made about where to priorities. Should I go big on the strikers, shore up the defence and goalkeeper or build a solid midfield to build off. Only a handful of players would cut it in the Premier League initially. Big decisions need to be made.   

Finances - Not a lot of money left. Bring on that Premier League money

Transfers - I made plenty of new signings as I released a bunch of players. I did struggle to find strikers but we managed well with what we had. I made our record sale with Burke leaving in January for £5.75m rising to £6.75m. Fulton was a ready made replacement so I didnt need to go out and spend. 

 

Key Player Profiles:

Alain Prevost - 39 goals for the main man upfront. Hopefully he can cut it in the Premier League.

Emanuele Rotondo - Brought him back on loan and had a great season. 26 goals and 18 assists.   

Bassala Sambou - Special mention as I've had this guy since the Vanarama North and he has scored in every division. I'll give him a shot in the Premier League. 

Next Season

Attempt to survive in the Premier League

Other News

Now that we have reached the Premier League and a new stadium is on the way I have persuaded the board to begin work new training and youth facilities alongside improving our youth recruitment. Its time to finally put some money into the facilities and I think that with the Premier League money we receive next season we should begin looking towards the future of the club. I have also been given a ludicrous £22.8m transfer budget for next season. I cant wait to get spending some real money!


Career Overview 

Season          League                      League Finish     Achievements
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2018/19         Vanarama South              9th               FA Cup 2nd round  
2019/20         Vanarama North		    3rd	 	      Lost in playoff final
2020/21         Vanarama North		    1st	              Champions and FA Trophy Winners
2021/22         Vanarama National           1st               Champions, FA Trophy finalists & FA Cup 3rd round
2022/23		Sky Bet League 2	    1st		      Champions  
2023/24         Sky Bet League 1            4th               Lost in playoff final
2024/25         Sky Bet League 1            1st               Champions, FA Cup round 5 & Checkatrade Trophy winner
2025/26         Sky Bet Championship        1st               Champions
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Hypanimz

Hypanimz

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2 minutes ago, Upside Down said:

Amazing @Hypanimz

Will be interesting to see if Sambou can be successful in the Premier League.

Thanks! I don't think he will personally. He got a lot less effective in League One. He did manage a respectable 7 goals last season but I would like him to score a Premier League goal so then he has scored in every division for me. That would be a nice achievement for me.

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JB14299

JB14299

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Lowestoft Town - 2018/19 - Vanarama National League North

 

League - A decent-ish season in the end, but we're left thinking what could have been after a fantastic start saw us in the playoff places and even potentially being able to go on and win the league. Unfortunately, a poor second half of the season including 4 wins in our last 16 league games saw us drop down the table into 13th. Hopefully we can build on it next season.

Cup Competitions - Nothing much happened here really.

Transfers - A good number of lads joined us in the summer, though to be honest not many of them were fantastic for us. The real standout was perhaps David Martin with 7 goals and 10 assists from left wing before I moved to a narrow 4-3-3 system.

Finances - Ouch. Could really do with a nice cup run next season.

Key Player Profiles:

Jake Reed - An outstanding season from our main striker saw him notch 32 goals and 14 assists, finishing second in the top scorers list.

Jacek Zielonka - A solid season from the Pole who our coaches deemed surplus to requirements, grabbing 22 goals and 9 assists.

David Martin - As mentioned earlier, David Martin was great on the left of our initial 4-4-2 and notched 7 goals and 10 assists. His stats here are convincing me to go back to the 4-4-2 which served us well early in the season.

Career Overview:

Season          League                                                        Position                                       Achievements/Notes     

2018/19        Vanarama National League North         13th                                                           N/A 

 

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Antwebb

Antwebb

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EGaCdNt.jpg

Season 2018/19

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League Table

Well crap. It was a mostly slow death. After a decent first half to the season, playing a counter-attacking 4-4-1-1 2DM, we just stopped scoring goals. My defence was always bobbins, so when my main striker Josh Hine went on a long barren spell, it was always going to end in tears. A radical formation change with about six games left completely backfired and we were relegated with one game to go.

 

But! Lowestoft Town have just been promoted without a manager, and they were dumb enough to appoint me. Looks like I get another chance. 

Season		League				Position	Notes
2018/19		Vanarama National League Nth	21st		Sacked from Warrington, Hired at Lowestoft

 

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Warhawk

Warhawk

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Neat.  Just made my first significant player sale, a young striker who had gotten a handful of games in the first team, to Millwall for $80k straight-up plus 50% of his next transfer.  I think there's a decent chance of capitalizing on that, he's got a lot of potential and I had 3 Championship teams make offers, but Millwall offered the most, and they're in danger of relegation this season so maybe they end up selling him upwards again.

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Wlv

Wlv

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@XaW, @The Art of Drowning

Not just related to dulwich, I'm pretty sure you can exploit your low reputation in the game. For the the first half of each season (after promotion), you'll find the majority of teams play in an attacking way against you making it really easy to counter and win games. It seems to settle at around the half way point in the season (reputations update?). It seems the AI gets this too. Barrow are doing their own mini challenge and went from the National League to League One with back to back promotions. They're tactic sets them up to hit teams on the break and overload the oppositions defence when countering.

 

I'm joint top in league one after back to back promotions all the way so far. The only reason I'm not miles ahead is I'm still in all the cups (checkatrade, league cup quarters and fa cup 3rd round) and my players are exhausted.

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XaW

XaW

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8 minutes ago, Wlv said:

@XaW, @The Art of Drowning

Not just related to dulwich, I'm pretty sure you can exploit your low reputation in the game. For the the first half of each season (after promotion), you'll find the majority of teams play in an attacking way against you making it really easy to counter and win games. It seems to settle at around the half way point in the season (reputations update?). It seems the AI gets this too. Barrow are doing their own mini challenge and went from the National League to League One with back to back promotions. They're tactic sets them up to hit teams on the break and overload the oppositions defence when countering.

I'm joint top in league one after back to back promotions all the way so far. The only reason I'm not miles ahead is I'm still in all the cups (checkatrade, league cup quarters and fa cup 3rd round) and my players are exhausted.

I actually have a slightly different impression. My tactic works better towards the end of the seasons. I often struggle at the start and when the pre-game odds are turning in my favor I do better. But that is all down to how the AI reacts. At the start you are an underdog and the allow you space since they attack you. When your rep catches up to your overachieving then they will not attack you as much and if you don't change your tactical approach you might struggle. This is actually one of the most common complaints I've read here on the forums over the years, and, incidentally, the origin of the "AI is cheating" and "AI are cracking the tactics" myths that are running around.

When I look back at my schedules for the earlier seasons, I notice I'm doing ok-ish at the start, then have a horrible period just before Christmas (probably down to fixture congestion) and then from around February I have great runs. Since I use a general tactic and try to switch it around to fit each match, I don't have that big of an issue with the reputation increase, but I still notice I'm better at playing against more defensive teams.

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Sn00gle

Sn00gle

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Season 2019/2020

Znalezione obrazy dla zapytania dulwich hamlet

Squad - League - Transfers - Finances

Season start with takeover. New chairman was happy about everything so I could keep cool and prepare team for the season. Compare to last year I wanted to go with new tactic but all my atempts were not enough for me. To be honest I tried one tactic from forum and I played with it all friendlies and few matches in league (tactic compare to league faield hard). After losing in 2nd Quali round in FA Cup I said "Damit I can do it by my self!" and I took my oldschool 4-1-2-1-2 Diamond tactic from FM11on workbench and I think i don't need speak a lot about results you can just see it by yourself :) Only 3 loses and semi-final of FA Trophy with Carlisle (2-1, 3-5) worth to mention we eleminate for example Chester 1-0 playing as 10 half match. 91 points in league total rekt for everyone I think I won the league 5 or 6 rounds before it ends so a lot of youth had theyr time. If we speaking about young guns Fenton is probably best prospect from my intake and he used hes chances in first team very well. Our finanes are bad but I don't care so much right now. After wining the league we got some improvments and after my request we turning professional. I did only few transfer for players on positions i didnt have. James was very impactfull and with Faal they carried us very hard. Ofc James got title transfer of the season, goal of the seasons and many many more. Target of next season is ofc survive in new league or reach playoffs. Cheers!

  

Season    League            Position    FA Cup       FA Trophy      Training Facilities    Youth Facilities     Junior Coaching     Youth Recruitment   Achievements/Notes        Top Scorer             Most Assists                  Highest Avg Rating 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2018/19   Vanarama South    6th        4st Q Round      1st Round        Basic                   Basic                Adequate           Fairly Basic       Play-off Final           Faal (19)              Faal (13)                     Rees (7.61)
2018/19   Vanarama South    1st        2nd Q Round      Semi-Final        Basic                   Basic                Adequate           Fairly Basic       Promotion           Faal (35)              Faal (14)                     Faal (7.56)

 

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Wlv

Wlv

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@XaW this is the beauty of FM, we are both running the same version but have the opposite challenge. 

 

I play a relatively direct 433 (Narrow), the general play isn't very sexy. We invite pressure then hit on the break. We struggle a little against teams that sit back, however we only tend to face those tactics once our rep catches up

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IainWhite

IainWhite

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So been a bit slack with my updates i'm currently in my third season with Leatherhead we went top after the Bognor Regis game and then went on this terrible run leaving us 19 points off top! The annoying thing we dominated all the games and lost most games to every shot on target going in! Close to starting again finances are so poor nearly half a million in debt and all my players becoming unsettled and wanting to leave.

5a16d2fedde42_LeatherheadFC_SeniorFixtures-2.thumb.png.cda0a8204bf48cb6be198669c3da8a21.png

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Tyggis

Tyggis

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Posted
19 hours ago, XaW said:

@The Art of Drowning: I think there might be something with Dulwich Hamlet. I just had a player who joined them over me. I'm in the Championship, they are in Vanarama National. When I look at the reputation list I'm way above them, so I don't know why.

In other news, I just sold a youth player. A winger I don't quite rate for £140k + 50 of his next transfer to Leeds. They must know something I don't...

TIKkbOg.png

t6SgzS1.png

Do you still not have a u23 side? Have you been given the chance to participate in the u23 league?

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XaW

XaW

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Tyggis said:

Do you still not have a u23 side? Have you been given the chance to participate in the u23 league?

Nope, not yet, but my youth level is still pretty low. I hope I can get one when I manage to increase it.

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Tyggis

Tyggis

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Posted
16 minutes ago, XaW said:

Nope, not yet, but my youth level is still pretty low. I hope I can get one when I manage to increase it.

Are you sure this is not a bug? Plenty of newly promoted teams to VNN and VNS have u23 squads already, even if they do have poor youth ratings.

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XaW

XaW

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Tyggis said:

Are you sure this is not a bug? Plenty of newly promoted teams to VNN and VNS have u23 squads already, even if they do have poor youth ratings.

I dunno, but in FM17 it was impossible to get one and I've only read somewhere that it could happen now on FM18. I'm still waiting and will report if it changes.

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XaW

XaW

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XaW - Marine - 2025/26

Marine_F.C.logo.png

Table | Squad | Transfers | Finances

The Championship, the penultimate tier of English football. And here we are, tiny Marine in the Championship, who would ever think it possible. We still have the same stadium with about 5k capacity, though we are filling it up now. When the season started we got a bit of a shock as we failed to win any of our first 7 matches. We did get it in the 8th though, but at that point I felt it would be a hard and long season with little hope of success. However, we did improve our game as the season went along and even had a little run before Christmas. Between Christmas and the new year we had 3 matches in 3 days, so that was quite hard, but it happened for every team, so it evened out so to speak. We continued to be quite inconsistent, going from big wins to big losses, but inching further and further from the relegation zone. With a few matches left I even had an outside chance of the playoffs, but as I assumed we were way off. Still, a finish in 10th place is very good for our first season here. With the right additions we could have an outside chance of playoffs next season.

In the FA Cup we drew Everton in the 3rd round and held them to a draw at home and managed to beat them 3-1 at Goodison. In the next round we drew Man Utd away and got thumped 4-0. Still good for the finances though. In the Carabao cup we beat Tranmere before losing away to Stoke on pens in the 2nd round.

My best players this season have been Manesseh Koenraat, at least before he got injured after tearing his hamstring twice, loanee defender Nathan Dawson and the Norwegian Pirlo, Edvard Tagseth.

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@High Flying Dwarf: Tagging you for update, if you are still here?

Edit: Also, KA-CHING!

mE6u8RJ.png

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Swindon69

Swindon69

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Posted

Squeaky bum time - 5 games to go 9 points clear of second, 4 to go 9 points clear. 3 to go 7 points clear.

Seriously in my last ten games 2 wins 6 draws 2 losses 5 penalties conceded in those games, my team became a bunch of nervous nellies. First 29 games 22 wins 3 draws 4 defeats. 

 

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FrankFizzle

FrankFizzle

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Around 12 or so games in with Salisbury, currently lie 4th in the table. Flew out of the blocks early season but now suffering a dip in form.

First season I went with Merthyr Town and finished 18th. Took over Salisbury - they actually play 2 leagues below Conference South in real life - seem to recall they were a regular in FM17 to be promoted from the unplayable leagues.

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tremor

tremor

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Posted

Margate 2018-19 Season

The season:

Overall a very successful season, rather than ending up battling relegation we topped the table early doors and then managed to close the season out although it did look like we were going to have a big wobble towards the end. Some crazy scores along the way made it an enjoyable rollercoaster though and our attacking 433 and 343 formations seemed to cause people lots of problems.

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FA Trophy - Semi-finalists

FA Cup - 3rd round, got beat by Nottingham Forest

Vanarama South - 1st

The squad:

The overhaul of the squad was pretty ruthless and it looks like it will be that way next season too, most of my squad are pretty young though and there is plenty of potential there for them to develop. Max Ryan, Aaron Jarvis and Andrew Dawber are probably the highlights of the squad although there were plenty of other good performances at times from the squad.

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Finances:

Looking pretty good, seemed to end the season in profit and i managed to keep the wage budget super low and also saved a lot on scouting by only using it for a couple of months pre season and at the pre-christmas period before snapping up a few free-agents as well as cutting a load of deadwood who complained too much mid-season. 2 decent cup runs probably really helped as well.

Looking Ahead to 2019-20

A further overhaul of the squad is in the offing, i'm retaining about 9 players from the first team and letting the rest go, which could be a big risk to the mentalitiy of the team but i'm not one for pointlessly holding on to players if they arn't good enough.

Most important players for me to pick up over the pre-season:

Hard-working defensively minded midfielder, preferably with good leadership and experience - maybe an older player

2 Strong, reliable Centre-backs to shore up the defence

2 Good hard working full-backs who can maybe rescue us when we play our high defensive line but also provide support going forward.

Personally:

Keep pushing for more coaching badges and start to push for improved training facilities, although i am thinking this could be a good time to start working on developing a youth based setup. We'll see what happens!

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Hypanimz

Hypanimz

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I've been taken by surprise as the transfer window in the Premier League now finishes on the Friday before the 1st game of the season! I didn't realise this had been implemented in game. I have 6 days to make sure I'm ready, I thought I still had over 3 weeks!!

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PS-GamerNeil

PS-GamerNeil

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finally got a few hours spare to crack on with my save. Had a play about with the fixtures screen and I noticed there is new columns this year for TV money income (might of been there last year but don't remember it). Noticed we got 72k for the Fa Cup second round game vs Doncaster!! Didn't even realize until now. Hoping our 3rd round game vs Spurs at home also gets on TV too. That could take us out of debt! Wow :eek:

Fm1.thumb.png.05a06973d9047af323afdb27dc83f6e9.png

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