[FM18 Network Game] Harrogate & Salford [Seasons Complete: 54 | Total Trophies: Harrogate: 95 / Salford: 114] Finished

[Nobby_McDonald]

You never know. When Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal all go bust...

[oliscott]

Season 37

Ended up pissing the title, FA Cup and Champions League away in a matter of three games this year which Sant then stole. Below is what we each won, the league table and transfers for the season.

[oliscott]

Head to head between us 

[Nobby_McDonald]

Some high scoring games between you.

[oliscott]

The worlds greatest

[oliscott]

Great news

[Weegie]

How would you guys feel about posting your save game file for others to take a look? Been really enjoying following these updates and would love to see what the teams are like for myself.

[oliscott]

Interesting times ahead

[oliscott]

Just an update on honours won as were not updating the thread after every season

Harrogate Town (58 Honours)
Premier League (12) - 2037, 2038, 2039, 2040, 2041, 2042, 2043, 2044, 2045, 2045, 2052, 2054
Sky Bet Championship (1) - 2029
League 1 (1) - 2026
Vanarama National (1) - 2021
Vanarama North (1) - 2020
Champions League (7) = 2039, 2040, 2043, 2047, 2048, 2052, 2054
Euro Cup (1) - 2036
Club World Championship (4) - 2039, 2047, 2052, 2054
Euro Super Cup (7) - 2036, 2039, 2040, 2043, 2047, 2048, 2054
FA Cup (5) - 2040, 2041, 2044, 2049, 2050
Carabao Cup (9) - 2031, 2036, 2038, 2040, 2041, 2048, 2052, 2053, 2054
Community Shield (9) - 2037, 2038, 2040, 2042, 2043, 2046, 2047, 2048, 2052
FA Trophy (1) - 2021

Salford City (52 Honours)
Premier League (7) - 2047, 2048, 2049, 2050, 2051, 2053, 2055
Sky Bet Championship (1) - 2027
Sky Bet League One (1) - 2021
Vanarama National (1) - 2020
Vanarama North (1) - 2019
Champions League (6) - 2037, 2045, 2046, 2049, 2051, 2053
Euro Cup (1) - 2034
Club World Championships (6) - 2037, 2045, 2046, 2049, 2051, 2053
Euro Super Cup (5) - 2034, 2037, 2045, 2049, 2051
FA Cup (8) - 2042, 2045, 2046, 2047, 2048, 2052, 2053, 2053
Carabao Cup (7) - 2042, 2043, 2045, 2046, 2047, 2050, 2051
Community Shield (8) - 2044, 2045, 2049, 2050, 2051, 2053, 2054, 2055
 

[Nobby_McDonald]

So Oli is better then.

[oliscott]

End of season 39

Below are what we each won,the final table and transfers

 

 

[Nobby_McDonald]

Oli goes further ahead.

[oliscott]

End of season 3940

Below are what we each won,the final table and transfers

[oliscott]

In your face William!

[oliscott]

End of season 41

The closest season between us in a while, title and all other trophies looked to be going Sants way after a 5-2 beating of me, after that I went undefeated for twenty games until the end of the season, stealing a march on the title and taking sant in the semi's of the champions league also.

This could be the season we start to change though as I've just been given a transfer budget of 6 million due to silly spending and a stadium to pay for.

[Nobby_McDonald]

Santy may as well give up now.

[oliscott]

Sant will be back, stronger than ever. He’s in a rebuilding phase at the moment strengthening all areas. We’re  currently level on points in the league undefeated.

He’ll update at some point if he can tear himself away From WOW

[Nobby_McDonald]

WOW?

[Jamie Cortez]

Stuck in the level grind is he. 

 

Amazing to follow, how much do you guys play a week? 

[santy001]

Been a couple of lean years for me as I'd been in strong positions just letting it slip. Last season it was Oli who finally slipped though, having been leading for so long he found his season coming undone thanks to two red cards. One in the third from last game of the season against Arsenal and another in the Champions League final against myself. I also got the better of in the FA cup and Carabao cup. In a full blown rekindling of Oli's bottlers, he also lost the club world championship final against a Brazilian team.

Last few years standards had slipped for both of us as this year was the first 100+ point year in nearly a decade. Extremely closely run as well.

For a long time I had been using various @knap tactics, in particular his blue matter 433 and the 442 variations, but over time the premier league has become something a bit different. Very often teams sit back with deep, structured formations at all times, but have blistering pace. The vast majority of teams have a number of attacking players with 16+ acceleration, so it necessitated some drastic changes as pressing and high line formations were just being carved apart.

So I decided read up on this thread from @herne79

It lead to me building this formation:

Borrowing some elements from Knaps 3 forwards formations and it's working really well. It's incredibly basic, but massively functional. The sweeper helps to provide a deeper anchor to counteract pace, perhaps a CD-Cover could do the same but it works well. The central forward is generally quite isolated from play, but that is largely by design. Leone in that role scored over 70 last season. The play at the back tends to be in a V shape between the two CB's and the keeper, then played to the wing backs or the DLP and it moves forward from there. 

 

[knap]

Did you consider a 343 like PILGRIMAGE P108. There is a 343 with both outside CB s are on cover.

[oliscott]

Spoiler

Spoiler

[oliscott]

Same old cowboy builders yet again, should never have been hired after the spurs stadium debacle.

[oliscott]

End of season 43

Sant managed to hammer home a few more goals than me this year in the league and my defensive record from last year was in tatters, still it was a bit hard to lose the title on goal difference.  Did managed to snag the FA Cup from him with a decent scoreline and practically steal the Champions League from him with two late goals to win 3-2.

[oliscott]

The big day is finally upon us 

[oliscott]

Operation have a bigger stadium than Sant

[Nobby_McDonald]

Your new stadium holds more people than live in Harrogate.

[oliscott]

Martin breaks record of most goals in a season

[oliscott]

End of Season 44

Another season for me in the league of being to inconsistent and Sant just coasting it home, did manage to win the FA Cup and steal yet again the Champions League from Sant with a 93rd minute penalty taking the game to extra time and reducing him to ten men. On wards and upwards for next year where I will playing my home games at Old Trafford after the stadium agreed to take the capacity up to 116k.

[oliscott]

End of season 45

The season that @santy001 has been building to all these years, really hit upon his team and formation and really does look unbeatable at times. Sant won everything he entered including breaking his duck against me in the Champions League final. The league was still up for grabs up until about game 28 when I lost to Chelsea and from then on I took another few loses and Sant wasn't going to slow down at that point.

The big talking point of this year was the stand out year of Jaroslaw (Coleslaw) Baran, Sants forward helped by his final third style of play managed to hit 103 goals in 62 games including 61 in the league which smashed the record

[oliscott]

End of Season 45

Sant has used the word blunt force trauma before and that is the best way to describe his side currently, the system he is playing is allowing Baran is Central forward to score over 100 goals in a season again, nobody else can compare. Pretty much a clean sweep in the trophies for Sant again this year apart from the Charity Shield which I wanted to win this year to celebrate the 25th anniversary of me fist winning it probably or just to know what it felt like to beat Sant for once. The league was pretty much is Sants hands winning it at a gallop and only losing one game later on to Arsenal in injury time, I had a torrid year trying to settle on a formation and battling the every increasing potency of the resurgent 4-4-2 which left me in 3rd, my lowest position for about twenty years.

[oliscott]

End of season 46

The title was yet again won by Sant this year but only seven points separated us, Sant had a bit of an off year compared to the previous two losing a few games and allowing me to close the gap a little. Silly points dropped by me would have made it even closer so next year should be an interesting one. The Champions League was once again won by Sant after we met each other in the final, a penalty for him in extra time decided that tie and means he has won 3 in the last 3 and it has now been 9 seasons since one of us didn't win it, the last being PSG. Sant also won every other cup competition available to him bar the FA Cup which I picked up with a win over Arsenal.

Stand out players this year were Martin for me who racked up 65 in all competition and Barran again for Sant who managed to hit 58, a massive hit on his last two years totals but injuries really hit him hard this year.

[oliscott]

A few odds and ends for me at Harrogate

[oliscott]

On 14/05/2018 at 23:03, Nobby_McDonald said:

He's the Spanish(?) Robin Friday.

Thought this reminded me of something when I saw it Nobby

[oliscott]

End of season 47

Another year of dominance by Sant winning everything apart from the League cup and Community Shield. Usual season really, pretty much all to play for by both of us around Christmas then we ended up playing each other twice in two games. I lost both and from there it just went downhill losing silly games and all momentum I had. I really need to start playing catch up here as sant is walking it at the moment.

[oliscott]

Martin becomes my club record goal scorere

[oliscott]

End of season 48

A season in which I should have had the title sown up by February, undefeated in all competitions until Jan 6th, conceding less than 15 in all those games I was coasting to everything. Then in usual fashion a loss to @santy001 just after the new year put my season in tatters, threw the league away with silly loses and strikers suddenly unable to convert chances, the league cup lost to Santy, the champions league lost to a Real Madrid side who just hit me on the counter putting all there chances away and putting me to the sword. Small consolation was winning the FA Cup which these days is nothing compared to @santy001 dominance.

Plus side was the great start which gives me something to reflect on and try and build for. Attendances where up to about 122k average this year which meant I made 90 million in gate receipts which should help long term.

Sant had a clean sweep of everything I didn't win although strangely he did surrender a near 30 year undefeated streak in the World Club Championship to Flamengo, a team who have haunted me down the years. Then to add to that he also came undone on penalties against Club Bruge who have become a real force due to there supply of youth prospects.

[oliscott]

Approaching the end game for this save, think we have one more season before well just jump into the Beta for a test save to get a feel of the game before a brand new save for the full release. Will knock up a review of the entire thing at some point, trophies won, best players, records and the like.

[Nobby_McDonald]

You should manage Salford and Santy should manage Harrogate in FM19.

[santy001]

25 minutes ago, Nobby_McDonald said:

You should manage Salford and Santy should manage Harrogate in FM19.

We have been discussing what to do for next years FM. We're not going to make the mistake of starting a save on the beta, as there were ultimately a lot of issues that plagued our game. 

One thing we want to do is come up with a good set-up for posts for updating the thread outside of just the post-season but trying to think of a way that's quick and easy to format it as me & @oliscott play through it quite quickly. We hit 2070 in the end, kind of stopped updating the thread just due to it being quite time consuming to get a post up versus the time playing.  I also dramatically pulled back the trophy count in the later years, Oli couldn't quite get to grips with how football changed in our game, meanwhile I switched to a sweeper 3-4-3 and become fairly dominant. Twelve consecutive league titles and numerous other trophies, I ended up close to 20 total competition wins ahead. 

On the beta we're probably going to have a little Leeds - Stoke network game, and then start something on the full release. One thing we've discussed is instead of just uplifting teams, uplifting an entire league. We want to start somewhere that makes it harder than it was in this game and a longer challenge. We had numerous long breaks in this game and still managed to hit 2070 (to which Oli keeps suggesting perhaps we need to get this checked out to see if its a record for a network game). In our save by the end Belgium had become a major powerhouse in football and were around 3rd or 4th in the coefficients having usurped France and challenging the other big nations. So during the beta it will be a case of checking for leagues that could be good to bring up to the top of European football while competing against each other.

[santy001]

The End of the Game

The last season. In truth there hadn't been much riding on our game for a while, in terms of the overall trophy hauls between myself and @oliscott. But pride was always on the line.

Early Years 2017 - 2037 | The first Premier League and Champions League wins.

During the start of the game, in the immediate years it was safe to claim that I with Salford had the upper hand. I got to the Premier league first (2027/28), it soon switched in favour of Oli. My chairman was very tight with funds, I'd had a takeover in the second season I think and it had left the club with a chairman who had no ambition and so when I had to try and stay up with nothing in the transfer budget, the writing was on the wall. Although I avoided relegation, and had some decent finishes (9th and 7th) when Harrogate came up for the 2029/30 season it quickly moved on from there. Harrogate had more ambition backing the club, a new stadium quickly followed and a few years of alternating who finished above the other ensued.

In 2037 the year finally arrived that one of us would win the premier league. Harrogate took the title in what future years would see to be a rather low points total, of just 88 points. This season really set us up for interesting battles in the future. While Oli had brought Harrogate to reign supreme domestically, I had gone to Europe and conquered. The champions league came back to Salford with my side in 2037. It would begin one of the worlds longest unbeaten runs in the history of the game. In the club world championship my unbeaten run would stretch from 2037 through to the last season in which we played in it in 2070. 

The Harrogate Dynasty 2037 - 2047 | Ten Consecutive Titles... near untouchable dominance. The World of William.

It was a team built from the back. In 2031 Oli would bring in a goalkeeper by the name of Alejandro Percudani, a man who would remain firmly in place until the 2044/45 season. He rose up the league with Harrogate, and was joined by Peter Wiklund in 2036 and Daniel Metzelder in 2037. 

The first standout striker of the game in William joined up with Harrogate in the 2033/34 season, and was firing on all cylinders by the time the title came in 2037. It was a tough time to come up against Harrogate, attacking talents such as Jorge Romero, Denis Skvorc, Robin Vos, and Zarko Grujic became regular 40+ goals a season strikers during the decade of dominance. 

Salford Trophies:

At Salford it was a terrible time, while I closed out this period with 3 champions league wins, they were my only major trophy of note. I also had 3 club world championship wins, 3 european super cup wins, 4 FA cup wins and 5 carabao cup wins. While it could be argued 18 trophies in 10 years was a good haul it paled in comparison to what I'd wanted to achieve.

Harrogate Trophies:

Harrogate with 10 consecutive titles had 4 champions league trophies, scoring the major trophies at a whopping 14 to 3 in favour of Oli. Only 2 club world championships, but 4 european super cup wins, 3 FA cup wins and 3 carabao cup wins. This meant that Harrogate brought in a total of 26 trophies. 

The score in terms of trophies here was 26 - 18 in favour of Harrogate. 

At this point in the game it looked like the domination of Oli was not something I could match. But then... football changed.

Oli had his best spell arguably during the 2040/41 season. Won 35, drew 3, lost 0. Scored 156 goals and conceded just 34. 

This was truly the team to beat, the players had all hit their peak. 

Here is the best XI from that season:

The Struggles 2047 - 2058 | The Evolution of Pace and the world comes to love 4-4-2

I won my first title in 2047, and then won another five to get five consecutive titles. These were the closest of years though, which good fortune could ultimately be held for me securing most of my titles. The first came by a 1 point gap, the third came by goal difference. The fourth came down to me being the victor in a game between us late in April, whoever won that won the league. If it was a draw, it would have gone the way of Harrogate. I did win 8 of the 11 titles during this time. But it was so close between us, both of us were beginning to do something that hadn't really been an issue in recent years. We were losing to teams we should be comfortably beating.

It was becoming a regular that looking at just 90 points could be enough to win the title, when a decade earlier you were needing to hit a 100+ and that sometimes still not being enough. 

4-4-2 become the formation of choice for many teams, and for both myself at Salford and Oli at Harrogate, a new trend rising was causing significant problems.

The most common feature in the premier league became speed demons. Players with 17+ pace and acceleration regularly in the wide midfield and up top positions. 

Salford Trophies:

During this time I managed to bring in a further 3 champions league trophies, 3 more club world championships and two european super cup wins. 8 premier league titles were racked up alongside 4 more FA cup wins and 3 more carabao cup wins.

Harrogate Trophies:

Harrogate managed less titles, bringing in the remaining 3 during this 11 year spell. Cup football was still a strong point of the Harrogate side generally speaking. There were 4 champions league trophies, 4 club world championships, 4 european super cups, 4 FA cups and 5 carabao cups. 2056 is the last time Harrogate would win the carabao cup. 

Our trophy hauls at this point were still very much in favour of Oli. In terms of major trophies, the score had gone from 14-3 in favour of Harrogate up to 21-14. The gap was closer but still not one I expected to bridge.

Overall the trophy count now stood at 50-29. 

The Baran Years 2058 - 2071 | The Sweeper system and a young German named Jaroslaw Baran

In 2058 something happened in our game. Oli at Harrogate dropped onto a formation that was highly effective, but lacked a bit in goal scoring. It was a 3-5-2 formation, employing wing backs and a defensive midfielder. He had played me with it and absolutely destroyed my team, and it was pulling in impressive defensive figures, if not so much goalscoring. 

It had me worried, I decided I needed to try and bring through some top players. I sold off most of my current team, and funded some large transfers. A new goalkeeper, Sabinbi Balde and I spent £90m on a striker called Jaroslaw Baran. With what he had been doing at Harrogate, and fearing that this second title was heralding a new era of dominance for Harrogate I decided to try something unconventional...

The sweeper.

I'd spent the majority of Oli's title campaign of 2058 bedding in this formation. It proved to be a huge asset to breaking the 4-4-2 dominance that had come about in our game and of negating the pace of opponents. I looked at his analytics and what the DM did, and felt a sweeper could combine the best of both worlds while letting me keep a third forward up top. 

The goals came, and the defensive side of the team remained strong. It broke the pacey counter attacks that had been my undoing. Oli was late to adopt the sweeper, only really going for it himself in the last 2 seasons and becoming a much more serious threat once more. At the end though, I had secured 13 consecutive premier league titles. Had the game continued further, I feel like perhaps Oli and Harrogate would go on to be the dominant force. My team was fading, I'd been holding on to the title a few years past our best and was struggling to find the players who would keep it at the high levels. Not to mention that once more in our game, football is changing. The 4-2-3-1 has been coming back into favour, and its been causing my sweeper system a lot of problems. I think had we carried on for another decade it would've belonged to Harrogate.

Particularly with a solid striker who had arrived this season called Robin Beitz, he scored over 60 goals in his first season, and his strike partners pulled in 59 and 42 respectively. 

Salford Trophies:

13 consecutive league titles came to Salford alongside 8 champions league titles. 7 club world championships (despite losing one, I lost on penalties, so my unbeaten run remained in tact), 8 european super cups, 7 FA cups and 11 carabao cups.

Harrogate Trophies:

Harrogate brought home 4 champions league titles, 3 club world championships, 3 european super cups and 6 FA cups.

Our trophy hauls switched here. On the major trophies it went to 35-25 in favour of Salford.

Overall it went to 83-66 in favour of Salford.

From there, minor titles (charity shield) and lower titles on the way up brought our total hauls to 114 - 95. 

[santy001]

Jaroslaw Baran

The man who came to be the best part of one of my FM games in many a year. It's not very often in FM you get a striker who scores over 100 goals in a season, Baran managed it twice.

At the same time, never has a players career in an FM game been so tragic for me. Baran scored 754 goals in 652 games for me, he scored 143 goals in 144 caps for Germany. He scored 48 in 96 games for Dortmund and if you go all Pele and count his non-competitive games he scored a further 226 in 171 games. Yet ultimately its a career that remains unfulfilled for its potential.

Here's is Baran at age 34:

Still a fantastic player. Despite the fact his attributes are well on the decline.

So what went wrong?

It seemed innocuous at the time, at the start of 2062 season Baran picked up strained knee ligaments in training, he was out for 2 weeks and then he picked the same injury up again 2 weeks later. Despite missing a month of football early on, this was the year in which he scored 114 goals. 

But it became the start of something, little injuries kept cropping up. After this he had 12 ankle/knee ligament issues which kept keeping him out. Knee and ankle problems in general came to account for 33 injuries of varying degree. In total from that summer he picked up 50 different injuries. He was constantly missing games here and there and never getting a run of form going to get back to his best. 

Here's his career stats:

He still managed a lot of games, but from 2063 onwards it was a constant issue of him either coming back from injury and being treated carefully and played less or he was out injured, and it was proving to be a massive problem. 

Considering he was missing 20+ games a season, and the fact he was never fully back to his best. He hadn't technically hit his peak yet, there could've been more, so much more.